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THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, LICHFIELD.

From a drawing by John Buckler,

he said; and when seventeen years afterwards his "Tetty" died, the loss almost broke his heart. The lady had a little money, which was expended in fitting up an academy for young gentlemen; the venture proved a failure, for the school had never more than three pupils. One of the three was David Garrick, and when the school was given up, master and pupil went to London to seek their fortunes. "That was the day," he once said in a pretty large company, "when I came to London with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket;" Garrick overhearing him, exclaimed, "Eh, what do you say, with twopence-halfpenny in your pocket?" "Why, yes, when I came to London with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three-halfpence in thine!" It may be added that Johnson had also in his pocket a partly written tragedy which Garrick afterwards brought upon the stage.

Of those early days little is known beyond what escaped from Johnson in later life. On one occasion, recalling what he had suffered, the strong man burst into tears. No galley-slave could have been bound to the oar more closely than he was to the booksellers, his chief employer being Edward Cave, the proprietor of "The Gentleman's Magazine." Sometimes he was on the verge of starvation; one of his letters is signed with the dismal word impransus, and we are told how, when too poor to pay for a lodging, he spent the night walking with his impecunious friend Savage years that her "resplendent excellences” were “a little discoloured by hoary virginity."

round St. James's Square, and that they kept themselves warm by their patriotism. When he had a little money in his purse he "dined for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine Apple in New Street, near the Strand." No doubt he understood but too well the expedients recommended by an acquaintance, "Threepence laid out at a coffee-house would enable him to pass some hours a day in good company, dinner might be had for sixpence, bread-and-milk breakfast for a penny, and supper was superfluous. On clean-shirt day you might go abroad and pay visits." Sixpences, Johnson once said, were scarce with him in those days, and, unlike most of his Grub Street associates, he had a wife to support. His want of pence must be borne in mind if we would form a just idea of his character. A man who for thirty years or more was liable to be locked up in sponging-houses, and who in the interests of literature had been forced to use his fist-do we not all know that he knocked down his bookseller, Osborne, with a folio?-was not likely to escape from the conflict without scars; and his roughness and occasional want of consideration for the minor courtesies of life may be traced to this cause.

At the age of twenty-nine Johnson escaped from the herd of literary hacks by the publication of "London" (1738), an imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal, which brought him fame and the contemptible sum of ten guineas. At that period the publication of the debates in Parliament was not permitted, but Johnson, who

had now become a regular contributor to the "Gentleman's Magazine," published from notes (1740-1743) under the title of the "Senate of Lilliput," a report of the speeches, which was probably half truth, half fiction. "I took care,' he said, "that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it." When at a dinner, a speech of Pitt's was praised as superior to anything in Demosthenes, Johnson observed, "I wrote that speech in a garret in Exeter Street." On finding that these debates were treated as genuine, he brought them to an end, saying that he would not be accessory to the propagation of falsehood.

In these years of patient poverty Johnson was slowly building up his reputation. In 1744 appeared his life of Richard Savage, "an Earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice, who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribbands in St. James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds' weight of irons on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate."1 Lord Macaulay adds with truth that this little biography is a masterpiece, and that no finer specimen existed in any language living or dead. Three years later he undertook to produce a colossal work for the booksellers, for the very inadequate compensation of £1575; this was the English Dictionary, with which his name is popularly associated. In this labour he was forced during the greater part of seven or eight years to

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