SAUSSURITE SAVILE. 



103 



mountains; and to him we are indebted for the in- I 

 vention of several philosophical instruments ; as, for ! 

 instance, an electrometer, a hygrometer, heliother- 

 mometer, &c. In 1779 he had ascended the Alps , 

 fourteen times in eight different places, and in 1787 

 he ascended Mont Blanc, and determined its height 

 by barometrical measurements. Saussure died in 

 1799. Among his writings, his Essais sur I'Hygro- 

 mftrie, and his Voyages dans les Alpes (4 vols., 1779 

 96,) are the most valuable. 



SAUSSURITE is a massive or compact mineral 

 found in large masses in the Monte Kosa; in Cor- 

 sica; in the Bacher mountain in Lower Stiria, and 

 in Bayreuth. In certain varieties, traces of cleavage 

 parallel to the sides of a prism of 124, and to the 

 shorter diagonal of such a figure, are observable. 

 Fracture uneven, splintery; lustre pearly, inclining 

 to vitreous; colour white, passing into mountain- 

 green; streak white ; brittle; frangible with much 

 difficulty; specific gravity 3-25. It consists of 

 silex 49, alumine 24, lime 10, magnesia 3-75, oxide 

 of iron 6'50, and soda 5 - 50. 



SAVAGE, RICHARD, an English poet of the last 

 century, celebrated for his genius, irregularities and 

 misfortunes, was born in London, about 1698. The 

 singular story of Savage, adorned as it is by the pen 

 of his intimate friend, doctor Johnson (Lives of the 

 Poets), has acquired great celebrity; but there is 

 reason to believe that a great part of it is utterly 

 fictitious. Savage was probably the son of a woman 

 who had been employed to nurse a natural son of 

 the countess of Macclesfield by earl Rivers. That 

 lady always asserted and there is no good cause 

 for doubting it that her child died while quite 

 young, and that Savage was an impostor. John- 

 son's account, taken from Savage himself, is, that 

 no sooner did he see the light, than a most unnatural 

 hatred took complete possession of his mother ; that 

 he was placed with a woman in the lowest state of in- 

 digence, with directions that he should be brought up 

 in ignorance of his birth, and in the meanest condi- 

 tion; that the interference of his maternal grand- 

 mother, lady Mason, a little alleviated his lot; and 

 through her kindness he was placed at a grammar 

 school in the neighbourhood of St Alban's, during 

 which period earl Rivers died, revoking a bequest 

 he had made him, on being assured by the countess 

 that her child had been some time dead; and that 

 his mother endeavoured to have him kidnapped and 

 sent as a slave to the plantations. He was an ap- 

 prentice to a shoemaker (this is true), when the 

 woman, whom he had been taught to consider his 

 mother, dying suddenly, some of lady Mason's let- 

 ters, among her papers, discovered to him, as he 

 pretends, the secret of his birth; or, as appears 

 probable, suggested to him the plan of assuming to 

 be the child of lady Macclesfield, whom his mother 

 had nursed, and to whom these letters really re- 

 lated. He now became an author for the means of 

 bodily subsistence. His first work was a pamphlet 

 on the Bangorian controversy, which was followed 

 by two comedies, Woman's a Riddle, and Love in 

 a Veil, which procured him the acquaintance of Sir 

 Pachard Steele and Mr Wilkes. In 1723, his tra- 

 gedy, on the subject of Sir Thomas Overbury, was 

 brought out; the. author himself performed the 

 principal character, but with little success; the pro- 

 fits of the piece, however, appear to have amounted 

 to about 200. The poet was now rising in repu- 

 tation, when, in 1727, in a broil in a house of ill 

 fame, he killed a Mr Sinclair; and, being tried for 

 murder, a verdict of guilty was pronounced against 



him. Through the influence, however, of lady 

 Hertford, the king's pardon was granted him. 

 Soon after, lord Tyrconnel received him into his 

 house, and allowed him two hundred pounds a year. 

 In 1729, he published his Wanderer, a Morel Poem. 

 A quarrel with his patron once more turned him 

 adrift upon the world, and he now brought out 

 The Bastard, a poem of merit. A Birth-day Ode, 

 addressed to the queen, procured him a pension of 

 fifty pounds from her majesty, to which he was 

 eventually mainly indebted for his support. A 

 satire against the clergy, entitled the Progress of a 

 Divine, caused a prosecution to be instituted against 

 him; but the information was dismissed. From 

 this period, he appears to have sunk into the lowest 

 misery. The death of the queen, and the loss of 

 his pension, completed his ruin; and, although a 

 few friends raised a subscription, with a view of 

 enabling him to reside in Wales, the same propen- 

 sity to dissipation induced him not only to squander 

 the money advanced to him, but to incur a debt of 

 eight pounds at Bristol ; for which he was arrested, 

 thrown into the county jail, and eventually removed 

 to Newgate, where he died in 1743. Although 

 Savage at one time received an allowance of fifty 

 pounds a year from Mrs Oldfield, and repeatedly 

 extorted considerable sums of money from lady 

 Macclesfield by threats of lampooning her, besides 

 other sums from the admirers of his genius, his ex- 

 travagance always kept him poor ; and it is well 

 known that he was the friend and companion of 

 Johnson at the time when the latter was sleeping 

 in the streets of London, houseless and pennyless. 

 For the true character and history of Savage, see 

 Gait's Lives of the Players (London, 1831, 1st 

 vol.). 



SAVANNAH; a river which forms the north- 

 east boundary of Georgia, and separates it from 

 South Carolina. It is formed by the junction of 

 the Tugalo and Kiowee, 100 miles by the course of 

 the river above Augusta. The largest vessels 

 come up to Five-fathom Hole, within three miles 

 of the city of Savannah, eighteen miles from the 

 ocean; large brigs come to the wharves; steam- 

 boats of 150 tons ascend to Augusta, about 250 

 miles by water, and 127 by land; and pole-boats 

 ascend 100 miles farther, and then fifty miles on 

 the Tugalo branch. Boats on this branch carry 

 from thirty to sixty bags of cotton, and return 

 with eight or ten tons of merchandise. Tides flow 

 up twe"nty-five miles. 



SAVANNAH; a city of Georgia, and port of 

 entry, in Chatham county, on the south bank of 

 Savannah river. It is built on a sandy bluff point, 

 forty feet high. It was laid out by general Ogle- 

 thorpe in 1733. The town is regularly built ; the 

 streets are wide, and ornamented with the China 

 tree. The chief part of the exports and imports 

 of the state are landed here. In 1829, it contained 

 ten houses of worship, an exchange, a court house, 

 a jail, a poor bouse, an hospital, a theatre, an aca- 

 demy, two state banks, and a branch of the United 

 States bank. Two of the churches are for Afri- 

 cans; and one of these has more than 2000 mem- 

 bers attached to the congregation. Population in 

 1830, 7303; lat. 32 2' N.; Ion. 81 3' W. 



SAVILE, SIR HENRY, one of the most elegant 

 scholars of his age, was born in 1549, and, after 

 graduating at Bra/en-nose college, Oxford, removed 

 on a fellowship to Merton college, in the same uni- 

 versity. In his twenty-ninth year, he made a tour 

 on the continent, for the purpose of perfecting 



