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To Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, regarding Richard Savage

Autograph letter, signed ("E. Young"), to [Lady Mary Wortley Montagu], regarding her patronage of Richard Savage.

Young, Edward.

N.p: 1 March 1725/6.

Price: $3,500.00

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About the item

1 p. 4to. To Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, regarding Richard Savage. Old folds, repaired tear at left, left edge reinforced at verso with blank margin slightly trimmed; matted with portrait and framed.

Item #314956

Edward Young (1683-1765) writes to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to acknowledge the monetary gift she'd sent, on Young's appeal, to the infamous poet Richard Savage (1697/8-1743). In part: "I have seen Mr. Savage, who is extremely sensible of the honor your ladyship did him by me. You was, I find, too modest of your opinion of the present you pleased to make him, if Mr. Savage may be allowed to be a judge in the case...." Montagu's patronage earned her the dedication to Savage's Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (1726) (Johnson, in his immortalizing biography of Savage, wrote that the dedication "flatters without Reserve, and, to confess the Truth, with very little Art.") 18 months after the date of this letter, Savage would find himself in Newgate Prison for running a man through with a sword during a drunken dispute, for which he was condemned to death, then pardoned. This letter (along with many unflattering words for Savage) was printed in John Doran's Life of Young, which appeared at the beginnig of the 1854 edition of Young's complete works.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) was herself a poet, dramatist, noted 18th century observer of the Ottoman Empire (she was the wife of Britain's ambassador to Turkey), and the woman who introduced the smallpox vaccine to Britain. Young is mainly remembered today as the poet of Night Thoughts (1742).