The Wanderer

Wanderer, The,
a poem in five cantos by R. Savage ( 1729 ); some of it has been attributed to his friend A. Hill . Its design is obscure; its message, conveyed to the Wanderer by a Hermit, appears to be that ‘affliction purifies the mind’, but its most noteworthy passages are descriptive, and it contains some fresh observations of nature and landscape. Dr Johnson observed that it was ‘a heap of shining materials thrown together by accident, which strikes…with the solemn magnificence of a stupendous ruin’.