Cornels, and savage berries of the wood, Dryden. savage drove of men in caves, might be so disor- To deprive us of metals is to make us mere savages; to change our corn for the old Arcadian diet, our houses and cities for dens and caves, and our cloathing for skins of beasts: 'tis to bereave us of all arts and sciences, nay, of revealed religion. Bentley. Tyrants no more their sarage nature kept, Broome. Thomson. Friends, relations, love himself, Savaged by woe, forget the tender tie. SAVAGE (Richard), the poet, was the son of Anne countess of Macclesfield by the earl of Rivers, according to her own confession; and was born in 1698. This confession of adultery was made to procure a separation from her husband, the earl of Macclesfield: yet, having obtained this end, no sooner was her spurious offspring brought into the world, than she resolved to disown him; and, as long as he lived, treated him with the most unnatural cruelty. She endeavoured to send him secretly to the plantations; but, this plan being frustrated, she placed him apprentice with a shoemaker. In this situation, however, he did not long continue; for his nurse dying he discovered his real mother, and therefore applied to her, and tried every art to attract her regard. But in vain did he solicit this unnatural parent; she avoided him with the utmost precaution, and took measures to prevent his ever entering her house. Mean time, having a strong taste for poetry, he wrote two plays, Woman's a Riddle and Love in a Veil: by the second of which he acquired the acquaintance of Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Wilks, by whom he was pitied, caressed, and relieved." But the kindness of his friends not affording him a constant supply, he wrote the tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury, which brought him in £200. He soon after published a volume of Miscellanies, to which he wrote a preface, in which he gives an account of his mother's cruelty. The profits of his tragedy and his Miscellanies somewhat raised him both in circumstances and credit; so that the world began to behold him with a more favorable eye, when both his fame and life were endangered by a most unhappy event. A drunken frolic in which he one night engaged ended in a fray, and, swords having been drawn on both sides, Savage unfortunately killed a man, for which he was condemned to be anged. But the countess of Hertford at length laid his whole case before queen Caroline, and Savage obtained a pardon. Savage now lost that affection for his mother which the whole series of her cruelty had not before been able wholly to repress; and considering her as an implacable enemy, whom nothing but his blood could satisfy, threatened to harass her with lampoons, and to publish a copious narrative of her conduct, unless she consented to allow him a pension. This expedient proved successful; and lord Tyrconnel, upon his promise of laying aside his design of exposing his mother's cruelty, took him into his family, treated him as an equal, and engaged to allow him a pension of £200 ayear. This was the happy period of Savage's life. He was courted by all who wished to be thought men of genius and taste. At this time he published the Temple of Health and Mirth, on the recovery of lady Tyrconnel from a long illness; and the Wanderer, a moral poem, which he dedicated to lord Tyrconnel, in strains of the highest panegyric: but these praises he soon was inclined to retract, being discarded by the man on whom they were bestowed. Of this quarrel lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage gave very different accounts. But our author's conduct was ever such as made all his friends, sooner or later, grow weary of him, and even forced most of them to become his enemies. Being thus once more turned adrift upon the world, Savage, whose passions were very strong and whose gratitude was very small, exposed the faults of lord Tyrconnel. He also took revenge upon his mother, by publishing The Bastard. Some time after this, Savage formed the resolution of applying to the queen; who having once given him life, he hoped she might extend be goodness to him, by enabling him to support i' With this view, he published a poem on he birth-day, which he entitled The Volunteer Lau reat; for which she was pleased to send him £50 with an intimation that he might annually expect the same bounty. But this annual allowance was nothing to a man of his strange and singular extravagance. His usual custom was, as soon as he had received his pension, to disappear with it, and secrete himself from his most intimate friends, till every shilling of it was spent; which done he again appeared, pennyless as before; but he would never inform any person where he had been, nor in what manner his money had been dissipated.-From the reports, however, of some who penetrated his haunts, he expended both his time and his cash in the most sordid and despicable sensuality; particn. larly in eating and drinking, in which he would indulge in the most unsocial manner, sitting whole days and nights by himself, in obscure houses of entertainment, over his bottle and trencher, immersed in filth and sloth, with scarcely decent apparel; generally wrapped up in a horseman's great coat. His wit and talents, however, still raised him new friends as fast as his misbehaviour lost him his old ones. Yet such was his conduct, that occasional relief only furnished the means of occasional excess; and he defeated all the attempts made by his friends to fix him in a decent way. Yet, amidst all his penury and wretchedness, this man had so much pride, and so high an opinion of his own merit, that he was always ready to repress, with scorn and contempt, the least appearance of any slight towards himself, in the behaviour of his acquaintance; among whom he looked upon none as his superior. He would be treated as an equal, even by persons of the highest rank. He once refused to wait upon a gentleman who was desirous of relieving him when in the lowest distress, only because the message signified the gentleman's desire to see him at nine in the morning. His life was rendered still more unhappy by the death of the queen, in 1738, when his pension was discontinued. His distress now became so notorious that a scheme was at length concerted for procuring him a permanent relief. It was proposed that he should retire into Wales, with an allowance of £50 a year, on which he was to live privately, in a cheap place, for ever quitting his town haunts, and resigning all farther pretensions to fame. This offer he seemed gladly to accept. In 1739 he set out for Swansey, in the Bristol stage-coach, and was furnished with fifteen guineas to bear the expense of his journey. But, on the fourteenth day after his departure, his friends and benefactors, the principal of whom was Mr. Pope, who expected to hear of his arrival in Wales, were surprised with a letter from Savage, informing them that he was yet upon the road, and could not proceed for want of money. There was no other remedy than a remittance; which was sent him, and by the help of which he was enabled to reach Bristol, whence he was to proceed to Swansey by water. At Bristol, however, he found an embargo laid upon the shipping; so that he could not immediately obtain a passage. Here, therefore, being obliged to stay for some time, he so ingratiated himself with the principal inhabitants, that he was often invited to their houses, distinguished at their public entertainments, and treated with a regard that highly gratified his vanity. At length, with great reluctance, he proceeded to Swansey; where he lived about a year, very much dissatisfied with the diminution of his salary; for he had, in his letters, treated his contributors so insolently that most of them withdrew their subscriptions. Here he finished a tragedy, and resolved to return with it to London; which was strenuously opposed by his constant friend Mr. Pope; who proposed that Savage should put this play into the hands of Mr. Thomson and Mr. Mallet, that they might fit it for the stage, that his friends should receive the profits it might bring in, and that the author should receive the produce by way of annuity. This kind and prudent scheme was rejected by Savage with contempt.-He declared he would not submit his works to any one's correction: and that he would no longer be kept in leadingstrings. Accordingly he soon returned to Bristol, in his way to London; but at Bristol, meeting with a repetition of the same kind treatment he had before found there, he was tempted to make a second stay in that opulent city for some time. Here he was again not only caressed and treated, but the sum of £30 was raised for him, with which it had been happy if he had immediately departed for London. But he never considered that a frequent repetition of such kindness was not to be expected. In short, he remained here till his company was no longer welcome. Necessity came upon him before he was aware; his money was spent, his clothes were worn out, his appearance was shabby; he now began to find every man from home at whose house he called; and he found it difficult to obtain a dinner. Thus reduced, it would have been prudent in him to have withdrawn from the place; but the mistress of a coffee house, to whom he owed about £8, arrested him for the debt. He remained for some time at a great expense, in the house of the sheriff's officer, in hope of procuring bail; which expense he was enabled to defray by a present from Mr. Nash at Bath. No bail, however, was to be found; so that poor Savage was at last lodged in Newgate, a prison in Bristol. But it was the fortune of this extraordinary mortal always to find more friends than he deserved. The keeper of the prison took compassion on him, and greatly softened the rigors of his confinement by every kind of indulgence. While he remained here his ingratitude again broke out, in a bitter satire on the city of Bristol; to which he certainly owed great obligations, notwithstanding his ar rest. This satire is entitled London and Bristol delineated; and in it he abused the inhabitants of the latter, with such a spirit of resentment, that the reader would imagine he had never received any other than the worst of treatment in that city. In about six months after his arrest he was seized with a disorder, which at first was not suspected to be dangerous; but, growing daily more languid and dejected, at last a fever seized him; and he died on the 1st of August 1743, in the forty-sixth year of his age. The works of this original writer, after having long lain dispersed in magazines and fugitive publications, were collected and published in an elegant edition, in 2 vols. 8vo.; to which are prefixed, the admirable Memoirs of Savage, by Dr. Samuel Johnson. SAVAGE ISLAND, an island in the south Pacific Ocean, about thirty-three miles in circumference, discovered by captain Cook, in the year 1774. The name was given on account of the rude behaviour of the inhabitants. Captain Cook says the island is of a round form, and good height; and has deep waters close to its shores. All the sea coast, and as far inland as he could see, was covered with trees, shrubs, &c., among which were some cocoa-nut trees. The inhabitants seemed to be stout and well made. They fish with lights by night, called tomais, made from the bark of the cocoa-nut tree. They form a decoy for fish. The island is in long. 169° 37′ W., and lat. 19° 1' S. SAVAGISM, a word of modern adoption, designed to express that ignorant and barbarous state of mankind, which most ancient philosophers, and some modern authors of eminence, suppose to have been the original state of all mankind. A numerous sect of ancient philosophers maintained that man literally sprung at first from the earth; that he was without ideas and without speech; and that many ages elapsed before the race acquired the use of language, or attained to greater knowledge than the beasts. Other sects again, with the vulgar, and almost all the poets, maintained that the first mortals were wiser and happier, and more powerful, than any of their offspring; that mankind, instead of being originally savages, and rising to the state of civilisation by their own gradual and progressive exertions, were created in a high degree of perfection; that, however, they degenerated from that state, and that all nature degenerated with them. Hence the various ages of the world have almost every where been compared to gold, silver, brass, and iron, the golden having always been supposed to be the first age. See AGE. : Since the revival of letters in Europe, and especially during the last century, the same question has been agitated both in France and the England. Such of the ancients as held that man was originally a savage were countenanced by the atheistic cosmogony of the Phoenicians, and by the early history of their own nations; the moderns build their system upon what they suppose to be the constitution of the human mind, and upon the late improvements in arts and sciences. As the question must finally be decided by historical evidence, before we make our appeal to facts, we may remark, upon the supposition that all mankind were originally savages, destitute of the use of speech, and, in the strictest sense of the words, mutum et turpe pecus, the great difficulty is to conceive how they could emerge from that state, and become at last enlightened and civilised but the modern advocates for the universality of the savage state remove this difficulty by a number of instincts or internal senses, with which they suppose the human mind endowed, and by which the savage is, without reflection, not only enabled to distinguish between right and wrong, and prompted to do every thing necessary to the preservation of his existence and the continuance of the species, but also led to the discovery of what will contribute, in the first instance, to the ease and accommodations of life. These instincts, they think, brought mankind together when the reasoning faculty, which had hitherto been dormant, being now roused by the collisions of society, made its observations upon the consequences of their different actions, taught them to avoid such as experience showed to be pernicious, and to improve upon those which they found beneficial; and thus was the progress of civilisation begun. But this theory seems opposed by unanswerable objections. In the preliminary discourse to Sketches of the History of Man, lord Kames would infer, from some facts which he states, that many pairs of the human race were at first created, of very different forms and natures, but all depending entirely on their own natural talents. But to this statement he rightly observes that the Mosaic account of the creation opposes objections. Whence then,' says his lordship, the degeneracy of all men into the savage state? To account for that dismal catastrophe, mankind must have suffered some dreadful convulsion.' Now this is taking for granted the very thing to be proved. We deny that at any period since the creation, all men were sunk into the state of savages; and, that they were, no proof has yet been brought, nor do we know of any that can be brought, unless our fashionable philosophers choose to prop their theories by the buttress of Sanchoniatho's Phoenician cosmogony. His lordship, however, says, or rather supposes, that the confusion at Babel, &c., was this dreadful convulsion: For, says he, by confounding the language of men, and scattering them abroad upon the face of all the earth, they were rendered savages. Here again we have a positive assertion without the least shadow of proof; for it does not at all appear that the confusion of languages, and the scattering abroad of the people, was a circumstance such as could induce universal savagism. There is no reason to think that all the men then alive were engaged in building the tower of Babel; nor does it appear from the Hebrew original that the language of those who were engaged in it was so much changed as the reader is apt to infer from our English version. That the builders were scattered is indeed certain; and if any of them were driven, in very small tribes, to a great distance from their brethren, they would in process of time inevitably become savages. But it is evident, from the Scripture account of the peopling of the earth, that the descendants of Shem and Japheth were not scattered over the face of all the earth, and that therefore they could not be rendered savage by the catastrophe at Babel. In the chapter which relates that wonderful event the generations of Shem are given in orders down to Abraham; but there is no indication that they had suffered with the builders of the tower, or that any of them had degenerated into the state of savages. On the contrary, they appear to have possessed a considerable degree of knowledge; and if any credit be due to the tradition which represents the father of Abraham as a statuary, and himself as skilled in the science of astronomy, they must have been far advanced in the arts of refinement. Even such of the posterity of Ham as either emigrated or were driven from the plain of Shinar in large bodies, so far from sinking into savagism, retained all the acquirements of their antediluvian ancestors, and became afterwards the instructors of the Greeks and Romans. This is evident from the history of the Egyptians and other eastern nations, who in the days of Abraham were powerful and highly civilised. And that for many ages they did not degenerate into barbarism is apparent from its having been thought to exalt the character of Moses, that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and from the wisdom of Solomon having been said to excel all the wisdom of the east country and of Egypt. Thus decided are the Scriptures of the Old Testament against the universal prevalence of savagism in that period of the world; nor are the most authentic Pagan writers of antiquity of a different opinion. Mochus the Phoenician (Strabo, lib. 17), Democritus, and Epicurus, appear to be the first champions of the savage state, and they are followed by a mumerous body of poets and rhapsodists, among the Greeks and Romans, who were unquestionably devoted to fable and fiction. The account which they have given of the origin of man, the reader will find in other parts of this work. But we hardly think that he will employ it in support of the fashionable doctrine of original savagism. Against the wild reveries of this school might be quoted all the leaders of the other sects, Greeks and barbarians; the philosophers of both appears to be the case in modern times. The academies, the sages of the Italian and Alexan- countries which have been discovered by the drian schools; the magi of Persia; the brahmins restless and inquisitive spirit of Europeans have of India, and the druids of Gaul, &c. The been generally found in the lowest stage of savatestimonies of the early historians among all the gism: from which, if they have emerged at all, ancient nations, indeed, who are avowedly fabu- it has been exactly in proportion to their conlists, is very little to be depended on, and has nexion with the inhabitants of Europe: Even been called in question by the most judicious Western Europe itself, when sunk in ignorance, writers of Pagan antiquity. (See Plutarch Vita during the reign of monkery, did not recover by Thes. sub. init.; Thucyd. 1. i. cap. 1; Strabo, the efforts of its own inhabitants. Had not the 1. xi. p. 507; Livy Pref.; and Varro ap. August. Greeks, who in the fifteenth century took refuge de Civ. Dei.) The more populous and extensive in Italy from the cruelty of the Turks, brought kingdoms and societies were civilised at a period with them their ancient books, and taught the prior to the records of profane history; the pre- Italians to read them, we, who are disputing sumption, therefore, without taking revelation about the origin of the savage state, and the ininto the account, certainly is, that they were civi- nate powers of the human mind, had at this day lised from the beginning. This is rendered fur- been gross and ignorant savages ourselves, incather probable from other circumstances. To pable of reasoning with accuracy upon any subaccount for their system, the advocates of sava- ject. That we have now advanced far before gism are obliged to have recourse to numerous our masters is readily admitted; for the human suppositions. They imagine that since the crea- mind, when put on the right track, and spurred tion dreadful convulsions have happened, which on by emulation and other incitements, is have spread ruin and devastation over the earth, capable of making great improvements; but bewhich have destroyed learning and the arts, and tween improving science, and emerging from brought on savagism by one sudden blow. But savagism, every one perceives there is an immense this is reasoning at random, and without a ves- difference. Lork Kames observes that the people tige of probability; for the only convulsion that who inhabit a grateful soil, where the necessaries can be mentioned is that of Babel, which we of life are easily procured, are the first who inhave already shown to be inadequate. vent useful and ingenious arts, and the first who figure in the exercises of the mind. But the Egyptians and Chaldeans, who are thought to support this remark, appear from what we have seen to have derived their knowledge from their antediluvian progenitors, and not from any advantages of situation or strength of genius. Besides, the inhabitants of a great part of Africa, of North and South America, and of many of the islands lately discovered, live in regions equally fertile, and equally productive of the necessaries of life, with the regions of Chaldea and Egypt; yet these people have been savages from time immemorial, and continue still in the same state. The Athenians, on the other hand, inhabited the most barren and ungrateful region of Greece, while their acquirements in the arts and sciences have rarely been excelled. The Norwegian colony which settled in Iceland about the beginning of the eighth century inhabited a most bleak and barren soil, and yet the fine arts were eagerly cultivated in that dreary region, when the rest of Europe was sunk in ignorance and barbarism. Again, there are many parts of Africa, and of North and South America, where the soil is neither so luxuriant as to beget indolence, nor so barren and ungrateful as to depress the spirits by labor and poverty; where, notwithstanding, the inhabitants still continue in an uncultured state. From all which, and from numerous other instances which our limits permit us not to bring forward, we infer that some external influence is necessary to impel savages towards civilisation; and that in the history of the world, or the nature of the thing, we find no instance of any people emerging from barbarism by the progressive efforts of their own genius. On the contrary, as we find in societies highly cultivated and luxurious a strong tendency to degenerate, so in savages we not only find no mark of tendency to improvement, but rather a It may be farther argued, that it does not appear that any people that were once civilised, and in process of time had degenerated into the savage or barbarous state, have ever recovered their pristine condition with foreign aid. Whence we conclude that man, once a savage, would never have raised himself from that hopeless state. This appears evident from the history of the world; for that it requires strong incitements to keep man in a high state of knowledge and civilisation is evident from what we know of the numerous nations which were famed in antiquity, but which are now degenerated in an astonishing degree. That man cannot, or, which is the same thing, has not risen from barbarism to civilisation and science by his own efforts and natural talents, appears further from the following facts:-The rudiments of all the learning, religion, laws, arts, and sciences, and other improvements that have enlightened Europe, a great part of Asia, and the northern coast of Africa, were so many rays diverging from two points, on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile. In proportion as nations receded from these two sources of humanity and civilisation, in the same proportion were they more and more immersed in ignorance and barbarism. The Greeks had made no progress towards civilisation, when the Titans first, and afterwards colonies from Egypt and Phenicia, taught them the very elements of science and urbanity. The aborigines of Italy were in the same state prior to the arrival of the Pelasgi, and the colonies from Arcadia and other parts of Greece. Spain was indebted for the first seeds of improvement to the commercial spirit of the Phoenicians. The Gauls, the Britons, and the Germans, derived from the Romans all that in the early periods of their history they knew of science, or the arts of civil life, and so on of other nations in antiquity. The same rooted aversion to it. Among them, indeed, the social appetite never reaches beyond their own horde. It is, therefore, too weak and too confined to dispose them to unite in large communities; and of course, had all mankind been once in the savage state, they never could have arrived at any considerable degree of civilisation. Instead of trusting to any such natural progress as is contended for, the providence of Heaven, in pity to the human race, appears, at different times, and in different countries, to have raised up some persons endowed with superior talents, who, having themselves acquired some knowledge in nations already civilised by useful inventions, legislation, religious institutions, and moral arrangements, sowed the first seeds of civilisation among the hordes of wandering disunited barbarians. Thus we find the Chinese look up to their Fohee, the Indians to the Brahma, the Persians to Zoroaster, the Chaldeans to Oannes, the Egyptians to Thoth, the Phoenicians to Melicerta, the Scandinavians to Odin, the Italians to Janus, Saturn, and Picus, and the Peruvians to Manco. In later times, and almost within our own view, we find the barbarous nations of Russia reduced to the same order and civilisation by the genius and exertions of Peter the Great. The endeavours of succeeding monarchs have powerfully contributed to the improvement of this mighty empire. In many parts of it, however, we still find the inhabitants in a state very little superior to savagism; and, through the most of it, the lower, and perhaps the middling orders, appear to retain an almost invincible aversion to further improvements. A fact which, when added to numerous others of a similar nature which occur in the history of the world, seems to prove indisputably that there is no such natural propensity to improvement in the human mind as we are taught by some authors to believe. The origin of savagism, if we allow mankind to have been at first civilised, is easily accounted for by natural means: the origin of civilisation, if at any period the whole race were savages, cannot, we think, be accounted for otherwise than by a miracle, or a series of miracles. To many persons in the present day the doctrines we have now attempted to establish will appear very humiliating it is a popular kind of philosophy to attribute to the human mind very preeminent powers; which so flatter our pride as in a great measure to pervert our reason, and blind our judgment. The history of the world, and of the dispensations of God to man, are certainly at variance with this doctrine respecting the origin of civilisation: for, if the human mind be possessed of that innate vigor which that doctrine attributes to it, it will be extremely difficult to account for those numerous facts which seem with irresistible evidence to proclaim the contrary; for that unceasing care with which the deity appears to have watched over us; and for those various and important revelations He has Vouchsafed to us. Let us rejoice and be thankful that we are men and Christians; but let not a vain philosophy tempt us to imagine that we are angels or gods. SAVAN'NA, n. s. Span. sabanna. An open meadow; pasture ground. SAVANNAH, a city and port of entry of the United States, in Chatham county, Georgia, on the south-west bank of the Savannah, seventeen miles from its mouth. It is situated on a sandy plain, about forty feet above low tide, and contains a court-house, jail, alms-house, hospital, theatre, public library, academy, exchange, three banks, including a branch of the United States bank, and seven houses of public worship, one for Presbyterians, one for Episcopalians, one for Lutherans, one for Methodists, one for Baptists, one for Roman Catholics, and a Jewish synagogue. The academy is built of brick and stone, 180 feet by sixty, of three stories. The exchange is a brick edifice of five stories. The new Presbyterian church is a very' spacious and elegant edifice of stone. The city, a few years since, was almost wholly built of wood, with very few elegant houses; but a large proportion of the houses recently erected are handsomely built of brick. Savannah has heretofore been accounted very unhealthy during the summer and autumn, but the salubrity of the place is now much improved, by appropriating to a dry culture those lands in its immediate vicinity which were formerly appropriated to rice. The city is regularly laid out, and contains ten public squares, each consisting of two acres, with a pump in the centre. The squares and public walks are planted with china trees, which contribute much to the ornament, comfort, and salubrity of the place. Savannah is the great emporium of the state, and is a place of much trade. In six months, ending the 31st of March 1818, there were exported from it 61,797 bales of cotton, 13,680 tierces of rice, and 1500 hogsheads of tobacco. The shipping owned here, in 1816, amounted to 12,766 tons. Vessels drawing fourteen feet of water come up to the wharfs; larger vessels take in their cargoes at Five Fathom Hole, three miles below the town. On the east side of the city is Fort Wayne; at Five Fathom Hole is Fort Jackson; and on Tybee Island, near the mouth of the river, there is a light-house. 118 miles south-west of Charlestown, and 123 south-east of Augusta. SAVANNAH, a river of the United States, which is formed by the union of the Tugeloo and Keowee. It separates South Carolina from Georgia, and runs south-east into the Atlantic. It is navigable for large vessels to the town of Savannah, seventeen miles, and for boats of 100 feet keel to Augusta, which, by the course of the river, is 340 miles above Savannah. Just above Augusta there are falls; beyond these the river is navigable for boats to the junction of the Tugeloo and Keowee. SAVARY (James), an eminent French writer on trade, was born at Done, in Anjou, in 1622. He continued in trade until 1658, and was afterwards admitted of the council for the reforma |