287 



SAVARY, ANNE-JEAN-MARIE. 



SAVARY, NICOLAS. 



Alban's, and afterwards placed by his mother with a shoemaker in 

 London. Soon after this, by the accidental discovery of some papers, 

 he became acquainted with the circumstances of his birth, which had 

 been studiously concealed from him ; and he made many efforts to 

 obtain an interview with his mother, who however resolutely refused 

 to see him. While very young, Savage commenced his career as an 

 author by taking part in the Bangorian controversy, on which he wrote 

 an unsuccessful poem, afterwards suppressed by himself. At the age 

 of eighteen he published a comedy called 'Woman's a Riddle,' and 

 two years afterwards another, ' Love in a Veil,' both borrowed from 

 the Spanish. Though these were failures, he thereby obtained the 

 notice of Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Wilkes, an actor. He became 

 better known as an author by his tragedy of ' Sir Thomas Overbury,' 

 in which he himself acted the part of Sir Thomas Overbury; and the 

 profits of this play, and of a subscription raised for him at the time, 

 produced a sum which appeared considerable to one so necessitous. 

 In the year 1727 his irregular habits of life led him into one of the 

 tavern broils then very common, in which he unfortunately killed a 

 man, and was tried and condemned to death. The circumstances of 

 the affair, and the doubtful character of the witnesses who appeared 

 against him, becoming generally known after his sentence, intercession 

 was made for him with the queen of George II. by the Countess of 

 Hertford, and the royal pardon was granted to him, in spite of the 

 efforts of his mother, who on this occasion spread a report that he had 

 once attempted her own life. 



The notoriety of this event was succeeded by an extraordinary 

 reaction of public opinion in his favour : he was courted by all ranks, 

 the fashions of the day were ruled by his opinions, and he was enabled 

 to maintain an appearance in society above his station by means of an 

 annuity of 2001. a year obtained from his mother's relations, under 

 the threat that he would expose her cruelty by lampoons if she refused 

 to support him. At this time he published his longest poem, the 

 ' Wanderer,' which was much admired at the time. 



Prosperity made more apparent that fickleness of character which 

 led him into extravagance and alienated his friends from him. His 

 fair prospects were soon for ever clouded by a quarrel with his patron 

 Lord Tyrconnel, who accused him of ingratitude, and banished him 

 from his house. His acquaintance in consequence generally deserted 

 him, and he sank into obscure poverty as suddenly as he had emerged 

 from it. The remainder of his life was passed in discreditable efforts 

 to regain his position in society by alternately flattering and satirising 

 all from whom he had anything to hope or fear. In despair of ever 

 conciliating his mother, he published ' The Bastard,' the severity of 

 which drew down upon her much public indignation, though it does 

 not seem to have re-awakened sympathy in favour of the author. 

 After an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the situation of poet-laureate, 

 Savage received from the queen a pension of 501. a year as a reward 

 for a poem in honour of her birthday, which his gratitude renewed 

 annually from this time till her death, when the royal bounty was 

 withdrawn from him. Having made no provision for such a contin- 

 gency, he was obliged, from his necessities, to leave London in the 

 year 1739, retiring first to Bristol and then to Swansea, where he lived 

 for about a year, receiving an allowance raised by subscription among 

 his friends. In January 1742-43, on his return to Bristol, he was 

 arrested for a debt of 81., and sent to prison in that city, where he 

 died, on the 31st of July 1743. 



The name of Savage has become better know than his merits 

 deserve, from the singularity of his early misfortunes, and still more 

 from the elaborate life of him which Johnson, the companion of his 

 distresses, has inserted in his ' Lives of the Poets.' This memoir is 

 interesting not only as a most faithful picture of the adventurous 

 career of Savage and of the manners of his age, but because it exhibits 

 very strikingly the chief excellences and defects of the author as a 

 biographer and a critic. The writings of Savage are in unison with his 

 character. The carelessness and want of system in his graver compo- 

 sitions, the frivolity in the choice and treatment of lighter subjects, 

 his unchastened style, feeble in its vehemence, illustrate the strength 

 of feeling and passion, the infirmity of purpose, the thoughtless 

 improvidence and want of settled principles of conduct, which made 

 the actions of Savage as inconsistent as his fortune was chequered. In 

 his ' Wanderer,' he declaims without the moral dignity of a didactic 

 writer, his versification is harsh, his descriptions are tedious, and the 

 whole poem is ill arranged and thronged with confused imagery. 

 Savage made enemies as readily as friends, and he testified his resent- 

 ment by satires full of coarse personal invective. 



From this general censure of the works of Savage, ' The Bastard ' is 

 in a great measure to be excepted. Strong natural feelings, goaded 

 by a sense of undeserved wrongs, gave to this poem a concentrated 

 energy of expression, a refinement of sarcasm, and an exalted tone of 

 thought, of which there are only faint traces in his other writings. 



SAVARY, ANNE-JEAN-MARIE, DUG DE ROVIGO, was the son 



of a veteran officer, and was born at Mans, in the Ardennes, April 26, 

 1774. His father had sufficient influence to obtain for him the grade 

 of sub-lieutenant in the infantry regiment, the Royal Normandie, in 

 1789, a few weeks before the first outbreak of the Revolution. In 

 1793 he was already a captain, at the age of nineteen. 



In the republican campaigns of 1794-95, when the French and 

 Austrian armies alternately invaded each other's territory, Captain 



Savary was attached to the army of the Rhine, under Custine, Pichegru, 

 and Jourdan. He was soon distinguished for his intelligence and 

 alacrity; and when Moreau took the command of the same army in 

 1796, General Desaix, an excellent judge of merit, selected Savary 

 to be his aide-de-camp. At Marengo, June 14, 1800, when General 

 Desaix was killed, Savary his aide-de-camp conveyed to the First 

 Consul intelligence of the loss which the French army had sus- 

 tained. Grieved as he was himself to lose the general whom he 

 esteemed the ablest of all those he ever commanded, Bonaparte was 

 struck with the evident sorrow of the young officer. He immediately 

 adopted him, and his brother aide-de-camp, Rapp, and attached them 

 both to his own person, in the same capacity. Shortly after Savary 

 was promoted to a brigade. He soon acquired the entire confidence 

 of his master. From 1802, exclusive of his military service, he was 

 charged with the secret police of the First Consul, in which the most 

 powerful personages in the state, not excepting the minister Fouche, 

 were placed under his surveillance, whereby he raised up a host of 

 enemies against him, and became the butt of many malicious reports. 

 Among other things he was accused of instigating the murder of 

 Captain Wright, of the strangling of Pichegru, and with behaving with 

 brutality to the unfortunate Due d'Enghien, with the superintendence 

 of whose execution he was charged. 



In 1805, having been raised to a division, General Savary was 

 entrusted by Napoleon I. with a private mission to the Emperor of 

 Russia. The following year he was honoured with the command of two 

 regiments of the Imperial Guards, and afterwards with that of the 5th 

 corps. He was now, at the age of thirty-two, a leader of armies, and 

 that he was equal to the task was proved by the brilliant victory at 

 Ostrolenka, February 16, 1807. For this exploit, and his good conduct 

 at the battle of Friedland, he received his title as Due de Rovigo. He 

 was sent to the peninsula in 1808, and he it was who prevailed on 

 Charles IV. and Prince Ferdinand to undertake the journey to Bayonne, 

 to meet Napoleon. Napoleon appointed the Due de Itovigo minister 

 of general police in 1810. He was left in this important office during 

 the march to Moscow in 1812, and was still performing its duties 

 when the famous conspiracy of General Mallet exploded. Having been 

 arrested in his bed, Savary was detained for several hours at the 

 prison of La Force, until the presence of mind of General Hullin had 

 averted the plot. The intelligence of Mallet's conspiracy induced 

 Napoleon to leave the army in Russia, but he still continued to place 

 the same trust as ever in the Due de Rovigo. In 1815 Savary was 

 raised to the Chambre des Pairs, during the Hundred Days, and 

 invested with the command of the gendarmerie. The British govern- 

 ment refused his request to be allowed to follow his master to St. 

 Helena. The rest of his life was spent in obscurity, from which he 

 was partially withdrawn in 1823 by a vindication of his conduct with 

 regard to the murder of the Due d'Enghien, in which he attempted 

 to remove the stigma from himself to Prince Talleyrand. The loud 

 outciy which replied to this appeal drove him from France. He 

 returned after the revolution of July 1830. 



On the 1st of December 1831 Louis-Philippe appointed him to the 

 command of Algeria ; but his administration did not give satisfaction, 

 and his unfortunate antecedents increased his unpopularity ; he was 

 therefore recalled in 1833. He died in the course of the following 

 year, in comparative indigence, leaving a large family almost unpro- 

 vided for. His son, the present Due de Rovigo, has acquired some 

 reputation as a musical and dramatic critic, in the newspaper 

 feuilletons. 



SAVARY, NICOLAS, was born in 1750 at Vitro" in Bretagne, 

 France. Having completed his studies at the college of Rennet, he 

 went to Paris, where he resided for some time. He had early con- 

 ceived a desire of travelling, and in 1776 he landed in Egypt, where 

 he remained till 1779. He was some time at Alexandria and Rosetta, 

 but fixed his residence chiefly at Cairo, making occasional excursions 

 in the neighbourhood, and to Damietta and other places in Lower 

 Egypt. He re-embarked at Alexandria in September 1779, and 

 travelled during two years or thereabouts among the islands of the 

 Grecian Archipelago. It is probable that he returned to France about 

 the middle of 1781. 



The first work which Savary published after his return was a trans- 

 lation of the Kora"n, the greater part of which had been made in Egypt, 

 ' Le Goran, traduit de 1'Arabe, accompagne" de Notes, et pre'cede' d'uu 

 Abre'ge' de la Vie de Mahomet,' 2 vols. Svo, Paris, 1783. This is the 

 best translation of the Kora"n which the French possess. The mate- 

 rials for the Life of Mohammed have been drawn chiefly from Abu'l 

 Feda and the ' Suiinah,' a collection of traditions considered authentic 

 by the Arabians. Savary next published a series of extracts from the 

 Kordn, under the title of ' Morale de Mahomet, ou Recueil des plus 

 pures Maximes du Goran,' 12mo and 18mo, Paris, 1784. 



In 1784 Savary published the first volume of his 'Lettres sur 

 1'Egypte.' The other two volumes were published in 1785, together 

 with a new edition of the first volume, 3 vols. Svo, Paris. This work 

 had at first an extraordinary reputation. The interest connected with 

 the country itself, especially the monuments of Ancient Egypt, the 

 picturesque style, and the brilliant colouring of the descriptions, ren- 

 dered the work extremely popular. It was translated into German 

 (Svo, Berlin, 1786) and English (2 vols. Svo, London, 1786-87). Many 

 objections however were afterwards made to the work, as that it 



