1737] HE GOES TO LONDON 29 a memorable circumstance that his pupil David Garrick went thither at the same time, with intent to complete his education, and follow the profession of the law, from which he was soon diverted by his decided preference for the stage. Johnson had a little money when he came to town,' and he knew how he could live in the cheapest manner. His first lodgings were at the house of Mr. Norris, a staymaker, in Exeter Street, adjoining Catharine Street, in the Strand. "I dined," said he, "very well for eight pence, with very good company, at the Pine Apple in New Street, just by. Several of them had traveled. They expected to meet every day; but did not know one another's names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for six pence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing." He at this time, I believe, abstained entirely from fermented liquors; a practice to which he rigidly conformed for many years together, at different periods of his life. His Ofellus in the Art of Living in London, I have heard him relate, was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practiced his own precepts of economy for several years in the British capital. He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was then meditating to try his fortune in London, that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at eighteen pence a week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, "Sir, I am to be found at such a place." By spending three pence in a coffee house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for six pence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, 1. When he came to town. "One curious anecdote was communicated by himself to Mr. John Nichols. Mr. Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an author, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a significant look, said, 'You had better buy a porter's knot.' He, however, added 'Wilcox was one of my best friends.'" Boswell. and do without supper. On "clean-shirt-day" he went abroad and paid visits. "This man," said he [Johnson], gravely, "was a very sensible man, who perfectly understood common affairs; a man of a great deal of knowledge of the world, fresh from life, not strained through books." Amidst this cold obscurity, there was one brilliant circumstance to cheer him. He was well acquainted with Mr. Henry Hervey, one of the branches of the noble family of that name, who had been quartered at Lichfield as an officer of the army, and had at this time a house in London, where Johnson was frequently entertained, and had an opportunity of meeting genteel company. Not very long before his death, he described this early friend thus, "He was a vicious man, but very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him." In the course of the summer he returned to Lichfield,1 where he had left Mrs. Johnson. His residence at Lichfield at this time was only for three months. He removed to London with Mrs. Johnson; but her daughter, who had lived with them, was left with her relations in the country. His tragedy, being by this time, as he thought, fit for the stage, he solicited Mr. Fleetwood, the patentee of Drury Lane Theater, to have it acted, but Mr. Fleetwood would not accept it, and it was not acted till 1749, when his friend David Garrick was manager of that theater. The Gentleman's Magazine, begun and carried on by Mr. Edward Cave, under the name of Sylvanus Urban, had attracted the notice and esteem of Johnson before he came to London as an adventurer in literature. He told me that when he first saw St. John's Gate, the place where that miscellany was originally printed, he "beheld it with reverence." He 1. Lichfield. A two days' journey from London. "Johnson let more than twenty years go by without visiting his native town, being hindered, no doubt, mainly by poverty. In the last seventeen years of his life, he visited it a dozen times." Birkbeck Hill. 2. Mr. Edward Cave. A somewhat close-fisted taskmaster, not altogether reputable in some of the things he published. Johnson, however, has said of him: "He saw little at a time, but that little he saw with great exactness. He was long in finding the right, but seldom failed to find it at last." 1738] REPORTS PARLIAMENT DEBATES 31 was now enlisted by Mr. Cave as a regular coadjutor in his magazine, by which he probably obtained a tolerable livelihood.1 That part of his labor which consisted in the improvement of the productions of other contributors can be perceived only by those who had an opportunity of comparing the original with the altered copy. What we certainly know to have been done by him in this way was the debates in both houses of Parliament, under the name of the "Senate of Lilliput." Parliament then kept the press in a kind of mysterious awe, which made it necessary to have recourse to such devices. 2 The debates, which were brought home by Guthrie, whose memory was very quick and tenacious, were sent by Cave to Johnson for his revision; and, after some time, when Guthrie had attained to greater variety of employment, and the speeches were more and more enriched by the accession of Johnson's genius, it was resolved that he should do the whole himself, from the scanty notes furnished by persons employed to attend in both houses of Parliament. Sometimes, however, as he himself told me, he had nothing more communicated to him than the names of the several speakers, and the part which they had taken in the debate. 3 But what first displayed his transcendent powers, and "gave the world assurance of the man," was his "London, a Poem, in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal." 1. Tolerable livelihood. "The authors of London were formerly computed by Swift at several thousands Of these, only a few can be said to produce, or endeavor to produce, new ideas; the rest, however arrogant perceive no particular summons to composition except the sound of the clock." Johnson: The Rambler. 2. Guthrie. "Guthrie arrived, dressed in loud clothes, and talking loud to everybody, and soon fell a-wrangling with a gentleman about tragedy and comedy and the unities, etc., and laid down the law of the drama in a peremptory manner, supporting his arguments with cursing and swearing." A. Carlyle: Autobiography. 3. Names of the several speakers. Later in the Life, Boswell says: "Johnson told me that as soon as he found that the speeches were thought genuine, he determined that he would write no more of them; for he 'would not be accessary to the propagation of falsehood.' And such was the tenderness of his conscience that a short time before his death he expressed his regret for his having been the author of fictions, which had passed for realities." It has been generally said, I know not with what truth, that Johnson offered his "London" to several booksellers, none of whom would purchase it. To this circumstance Mr. Derrick alludes in the following lines of his "Fortune, a Rhapsody": Will no kind patron Johnson own? Shall Johnson friendless range the town? The offspring of his happy Muse? But Mr. Robert Dodsley1 had taste enough to perceive its uncommon merit, and bargained for the whole property of it, for which he gave Johnson ten guineas; who told me, "I might perhaps have accepted of less, but that Paul Whitehead had a little before got ten guineas for a poem; and I would not take less than Paul Whitehead." The Reverend Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, was then a student at Oxford, and remembers well the effect which "London" produced. Everybody was delighted with it; and there being no name to it, the first buzz of the literary circle was, "Here is an unknown poet, greater even than Pope.' The nation was then in that ferment against the Court and the Ministry, which some years after ended in the downfall of Sir Robert Walpole; and as it has been said that Tories are Whigs when out of place, and Whigs Tories when in placeso, as a Whig Administration ruled with what force it could, 1. Robert Dodsley. Bookseller (and publisher) since 1735. "You know how decent, humble, inoffensive a creature Dodsley is; how little apt to forget or disguise his having been a footman." Horace Walpole, 1758. 2. Sir Robert Walpole. The greatest Whig of his day, and chief minister of the Crown from 1721 to 1742, during which time he corruptly manipulated Parliament in order to preserve peace abroad, and "the reign of common sense at home." Toward the close of his administration the Spanish government tried to stop all English trade with Spanish-American ports and brutally treated some of the English traders they caught. Like most of the wits of his day, who, like himself, were Tories, Johnson smarted under Walpole's peace policy. He smarted too, as many did, at Walpole's invention of new internal taxes, particularly at his invention of taxes on paper, which had almost ruined old Michael Johnson's business. a Tory opposition had all the animation and all the eloquence of resistance to power, aided by the common topics of patriotism, liberty, and independence! Accordingly, we find in Johnson's "London" the most spirited invectives against tyranny and oppression, the warmest predilection for his own country, and the purest love of virtue; interspersed with traits of his own particular character and situation, not omitting his prejudices as a "true-born Englishman," not only against foreign countries, but against Ireland and Scotland. On some of these topics I shall quote a few passages: "The cheated nation's happy favorites see; Mark whom the great caress, who frown on me." "Has heaven reserved, in pity to the poor, "How, when competitors like these contend, "This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, Yet, while we admire the poetical excellence of this poem, candor obliges us to allow that the flame of patriotism and zeal for popular resistance with which it is fraught had no just cause. There was, in truth, no "oppression"; the "nation" was not "cheated." Sir Robert Walpole was a wise and a benevolent minister, who thought that the happiness and prosperity of a commercial country like ours would be best promoted by peace, which he accordingly maintained with credit during a very long period. Johnson himself afterwards honestly acknowledged the merit of Walpole, whom he called "a fixed star"; while he characterized his opponent, Pitt, as "a meteor." But Johnson's juvenile poem was naturally impregnated with the fire of opposition, and upon every account was universally admired. |