The Wanderer: 'While Contemplation Weigh'd the Mystic View, The Lights All Vanish'd, and the Vision flew''

Richard Savage by his own accounts certainly had an interesting life. He claimed to be the son conceived by his mother and her lover in the dying months of her marriage. She claimed the child had died in infancy.

Savage's first confirmed work was the poem ‘The Convocation’, or ‘The Battle of Pamphlets’ (1717). From a Spanish comedy he created ‘Love in a Veil’ (1718) and then, in 1723, he played, without success, the title role of his tragedy, ‘Sir Thomas Overbury’ (1724). From these he appea...