SAUSMAREZ. See Saumarez.

SAUSSURE, Horace Benedict de, a celebrated Swiss naturalist, was born at Geneva on the 17th February, 1740, and died on 23rd January, 1799, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. His father was a farmer at Correches, near Geneva. Natural history became the favourite study of Saussure, and he prosecuted his botanical studies with earnestness, being stimulated by the advice and example of his uncle, Charles Bonnet. He studied at the college of Geneva, and at the age of twenty-two was appointed to the professorship of philosophy. He continued to discharge the duties of this office for twenty-five years. In speaking of the events of his life he says, "I had a decided passion for mountains from my infancy. At the age of eighteen I had been several times over the mountains near Geneva. I felt an intense desire to visit the High Alps. In 1760-61 I visited the glacier of Chamouni, which was at that time little frequented, and considered dangerous." Year after year he made alpine excursions, and he traversed the entire chain of the Alps fourteen times by eight different routes. He also made sixteen other excursions to the central parts of the mountain mass. He visited the Jura, the Vosges, the mountains of Switzerland, and of part of Germany; those of England, Italy, Sicily; the volcanoes of Auvergne, the mountains of Dauphiny and Burgundy. "All these journeys," he says, "I have made with the mineralogist's hammer in my hand, and with no other aim than the study of natural phenomena." He always made notes on the spot, and wherever it was practicable wrote out his observations in full, within twenty-four hours. These journeys extended from 1758 to 1779. In 1787 he reached the summit of Mont Blanc. In 1788 he ascended the Col de Geant, and in 1789 he stood on the summit of Monte Rosa. In 1786 he resigned his professorship at Geneva, and was succeeded by his pupil, Pictet. He was afterwards a member of the council of Two Hundred, and in 1798 was chosen a member of the national assembly. During the French revolution he lost all his property. His health began to suffer. An organic disease began to show itself in the heart, probably owing to his exertions in alpine travelling, and he was affected with palsy and convulsions, which cut him off at an early age. He did much to promote the cause of natural history, more especially geology; and he founded in his native town a society for the advancement of arts. He was a Neptunian in geology. He invented some useful instruments, more especially a hygrometer, electrometer, and a thermometer for ascertaining the temperature of water at all depths. Among his publications the following may be noticed—"Observations sur l'ecorce des feuilles et des petales;" "Voyage dans les Alpes precedée d'un essai sur l'histoire naturelle des environs de Genève;" besides numerous papers in the Journal de Physique and the Journal de Genève, &c.—J. H. B. SAUVAGES, François Boissier de, an eminent French medical writer, born at Alais in Lower Languedoc in 1706, studied medicine at Montpellier, took his doctor's degree in 1726, and in 1730 settled at Paris. The classification of diseases was a subject which engrossed much of his attention, and a sketch of his system, which he published in 1731, gained him a professorship at Montpellier. In 1740 he was made professor of botany, and for a time devoted himself with ardour to that science. His principal work, the "Medical Nosology," appeared in 1763. He died in 1767. SAUVEUR, Joseph, a distinguished French mathematician and physicist, was born at La Flèche on the 24th of March, 1653, and died in Paris on the 9th of July, 1716. He was educated at the Jesuit college of his native place, and showed a talent for mathematics and mechanics. In 1670 he travelled on foot to Paris, and established himself as a teacher of mathematics. In this pursuit he had much success; one of his pupils was the famous Prince Eugene of Savoy. Having been persuaded by the prince of Condé to write a treatise on fortification, he went to the siege of Mons in 1691 in order to study military engineering, and distinguished himself by the coolness with which he ventured under fire for the purpose of acquiring knowledge of the operations of the siege. In 1686 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the Collége royal, and in 1696, a member of the Academy of Sciences. Notwithstanding an imperfect sense of hearing, and a very bad ear for music, he accomplished a most laborious and accurate investigation of the laws of musical sounds; and in particular, by employing the method of "beats," he was the first to ascertain the absolute frequency of the vibrations producing musical tones, their comparative frequency alone having been previously known.—W. J. M. R. SAVAGE, Richard, whose poems are allowed a place in the collections, is perhaps less remembered as an author than by his romantic story, and the friendship of Samuel Johnson, who has made him the subject of a very impressive biography. According to his account of himself—one which the world long believed to be true—he was the illegitimate child of Ann, countess of Macclesfield, by Earl Rivers. If so, he was born in Fox Court, Grey's Inn Lane, London, on the 16th of January, 1697. His own story was, that from the time of his birth he was treated by his mother with singular cruelty; that he was given by her to a poor woman to be brought up as the child of another; that only through the kindness of Lady Macclesfield's mother did he obtain some scanty education at the grammar-school of St. Alban's; that his mother endeavoured to have him kidnapped and sent to the American plantations; that failing in this she apprenticed him to a shoemaker in Holborn; and that on the death of his nurse, he found among her effects letters which at last revealed to him the secret of his parentage. Through this story he became the object of general interest and pity; and with it he pursued and dunned his alleged mother, Lady Macclesfield, or Mrs. Brett, as she came to be called, for after her divorce from Lord Macclesfield she married a Colonel Brett. Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, published a statement by a gentleman connected with Mrs. Brett's family, which clearly indicated some errors, inconsistencies, and improbabilities in Savage's narrative; and Boswell himself avows that he is uncertain whether Savage was an impostor or not. The results of the most recent and very searching inquiries into the early biography of Savage are to be found in a series of papers contributed to Notes and Queries, in November and December, 1858. From these it appears very probable that the illegitimate son of Lord Rivers and Lady Macclesfield, born at the time and place already mentioned, and baptized as Richard Smith, really died in childhood, and that Savage was an impostor who traded on the knowledge of Mrs. Brett's early and indisputable guilt. Savage's first undoubted appearance in life was as the author of "The Convocation, or a Battle of Pamphlets, a Poem," published in 1717, during the Bangorian controversy, and which was an attack on Hoadley. He then tried writing for the stage. His second play, acted in 1718, "Love in a Veil," was published, and now for the first time he dubbed himself in print "son of the late Earl Rivers." The story of his alleged wrongs was first given to the world in 1719, in the "Poetical Register, or Lives of the Poets," published by Curll, and in all likelihood the narrative was furnished by Savage himself. Meanwhile his play had procured him the patronage of Steele, with whom, however, he quarreled, and for a time he seems to have been entirely dependent on the bounty of Mrs. Oldfield the actress. In 1723 he attempted the stage as an actor, playing, not successfully, the part of Sir Thomas Overbury, in his own tragedy of that name. When he wrote it he is said to have wanted a home of any kind; and after composing a passage in his mind he would step into a shop and beg for pen, ink, and paper on which to jot it down. The play itself attracted new attention to its thriftless, dissolute, and turbulent author. Still more was bestowed on him when in 1727 he killed a man in a tavern brawl, was tried at the Old Bailey, and condemned to death. It was during his imprisonment that was published a "Short account" of his life, which produced a great sensation. Persons of influence interceded for him with Queen Caroline, and he was pardoned. In 1728 appeared his spirited poem, "The Bastard," containing the often-quoted reference to the "tenth transmitter of a foolish face," and vehemently assailing Mrs. Brett. It was about this time that Mrs. Brett's nephew. Lord Tyrconnel, took Savage into his house and allowed him a pension of £200 a year—almost the only fact in Savage's biography which tells in favour of the truth of his story. But possibly, on the other hand. Lord Tyrconnel may have adopted this course merely to put an end to Savage's fierce attacks upon his relative. During this the only sunny period of his life, he produced and dedicated to Lord Tyrconnel the best of his poems, "The Wanderer," 1729. It was praised by Pope (whom Savage stooped to aid with anecdotes of Grub Street for the Dunciad), and has been called "beautiful" by Sir Walter Scott. Savage's felicity did not last long. He quarreled with Lord Tyrconnel, and was once more literally on the streets. "On a bulk," says Johnson, "in a