26 EARLY STRUGGLES. already given you, than assuring you that I am, with great truth, Sir, "Your faithful servant, "GOWER." The favour not being granted, Johnson thought of trying Civil Law; but the want of a degree stood effectually in his way here also. He had no help for it, then, but to return to the dreary, ill-paid, grinding toil of working for the booksellers. One of his letters to Cave, written about this period, ends thus : "I am, Sir, yours impransus, "SAM. JOHNSON." Think of that! Yours, without a dinner, "SAM. JOHNSON." There is no peculiar merit, indeed, in being "without a dinner;" but to be dinnerless and say nothing about it, or only to refer to the fact thus delicately at the end of a letter, couching the mention of it in Latin, too: that is well worth noting. Yet, though struggling in this way to keep the wolf from his own door, and barely succeeding, he was at the very same time busily interesting himself in the welfare of a young Scotchman, whose fortunes he was labouring to advance. This is shown by his next letter to Cave, which we give, not on its own account, but because of the testimony it bears to the fact that the pressure of Johnson's own sorrows did not render him callous to the sufferings of others :— "DEAR SIR, "TO MR. CAVE. [No date.] "You may remember I have formerly talked with you about a Military Dictionary. The eldest Mr. Macbean, who was with Mr. Chambers, has very good materials for such a work, which I have seen, and will do it at a very low rate. I think the terms of war and navigation might be comprised, with good explanations, in one 8vo pica, which he is willing to do for twelve shillings a sheet, to be made up a guinea at the second impression. If you think on it I will wait on you with him. "I am, Sir, your humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." EARLY STRUGGLES. 27 Among Johnson's early associates at St. John's Gate was one Samuel Boyse; of some note by reason of his cleverness, but of still greater notoriety by reason of his imprudence. Boyse was a good customer to the pawnbroking establishments; and on one occasion Johnson collected a sum of money to redeem his friend's clothes, which in two days after were pawned again. "The sum," said Johnson, when telling the story, "was collected by sixpences, at a time when to me sixpence was a serious consideration." No need of a long history of poor Johnson's sufferings at this period to those who can read the full meaning of one or two facts like the above. Nobody reads now-perhaps few will ever read again-" Irene," which its author called, and believed to be, "a Tragedy:" but the picture of this great and good man fighting so hard for his daily bread, and only snatching a mouthful now and then, and even that much with difficulty, is the real Tragedy, and will never cease to interest until sorrow shall have come to be known among men not as a sad fact, but merely as an ugly name. Thousands who can claim no kindred with Johnson's genius, and would shrink from comparison with his moral worth, may yet extend to him the right hand of fellowship on the ground of some common grief; for "Trouble makes us kin.” 28 STILL STRUGGLING. CHAPTER IV. STILL STRUGGLING-LITERARY HACK-WORK-"LIFE OF SAVAGE." (1740-1744) DURING the next few years Johnson's literary contributions, especially for the Gentleman's Magazine, were numerous; but they must have been miserably paid, if we may judge from the necessitous condition in which his letters to Cave and others prove him to have been throughout this whole period. In the year 1741, a strong effort was made to get " Irene" put upon the stage. Mr. Cave writes thus to Dr. Birch : "I have put Mr. Johnson's play into Mr. Gray's hands, in order to sell it to him, if he is inclined to buy it: but I doubt whether he will or not. He would dispose of the copy, and whatever advantage may be made by acting it. Would your society, or any gentleman, or body of men that you know, take such a bargain? He and I are very unfit to deal with theatrical persons. Fleetwood was to have acted in it last season, but Johnson's diffidence prevented it." or Nothing satisfactory came of these negotiations. One little bit of work put into our Author's hands about this time by a bookseller named Osborne deserves mention, because of a delightful brush that took place one day between employer and employed. It was, "Proposals for Printing the Bibliotheca Harleiana; or a Catalogue of the Library of the Earl of Oxford." The richest version of the encounter between the two is to the effect that Johnson knocked Osborne down in his own shop, with one of his own folios, and then put his foot upon his neck. We like the story best in this form, but truth compels us to give Johnson's STILL STRUGGLING. 29 own account: "Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him. But it was not in his shop; it was in my own chamber." The following extracts from a letter to Cave, written some time in 1742, will show the reader only too clearly to what straits poor Johnson was still reduced : "You told me on Saturday that I had received money on this work [a historical account of the British Parliament], and found set down 137. 2s. 6d., reckoning the half-guinea of last Saturday. As you hinted to me that you had many calls for money, I would not press you too hard, and therefore shall desire only, as I send it in, two guineas for a sheet of copy; the rest you may pay me when it may be more convenient; and even by this sheet-payment I shall, for some time, be very expensive. "The Life of Savage I am ready to go upon; and in great primer and pica notes, I reckon on sending in half a sheet a day; but the money for that shall likewise lie by in your hands till it is done. With the debates, shall not I have business enough? if I had but good pens." Then in a P.S. : "I had no notion of having anything for the inscription. I hope you don't think I kept it to extort a price. I could think of nothing, till to-day. If you could spare me another guinea for the history, I should take it very kindly, to-night; but if you do not, I shall not think it an injury. "I am almost well again." The poor fellow has been ill, then; and, if Cave cannot send him a guinea "to-night," must go supperless to bed, it may be. He has been "without a dinner" before now, and he has not seen the end of his distresses even yet. The biographies of the great are not always cheerful reading: the noblest man Scotland ever produced is left to die like a dog, and Samuel Johnson, with the bravest heart and the manliest soul in the England of his time, is working hard, fighting hard, and has to beg a guinea, notwithstanding it all. This is the way, perhaps, to bring up hardy boys; but it is surely a sad thing to see their sufferings in the rearing. As usual with Johnson, his own distress did not make him 30 LITERARY HACK-WORK. forget the needs of others. We find him writing thus to Mr. Levett, of Lichfield, on behalf of his mother, and with a delicacy of feeling which is morally sublime : "SIR, 66 'TO MR. LEVETT; IN LICHField. "December 1, 1743. "I am extremely sorry that we have encroached so much upon your forbearance with respect to the interest, which a great perplexity of affairs hindered me from thinking of with that attention that I ought, and which I am not immediately able to remit to you, but will pay it (I think twelve pounds) in two months. I look upon this, and on the future interest of that mortgage, as my own debt; and beg that you will be pleased to give me directions how to pay it, and not mention it to my dear mother. If it be necessary to pay this in less time, I believe I can do it; but I take two months for certainty, and beg an answer whether you can allow me so much time. I think myself very much obliged to your forbearance, and shall esteem it a great happiness to be able to serve you. I have great opportunities of dispersing any thing that you may think it proper to make public. I will give a note for the money, payable at the time mentioned, to any one here that you shall appoint. "I am, Sir, "Your most obedient and most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON. "At Mr. Osborne's, bookseller, in Gray's Inn." Next year he gave to the world one of the works by which, as an author at least, he will always be best known: "The Life of Richard Savage." Savage was a man of letters, of very fair natural abilities, and of profligate habits; but whose misfortunes and rough untrained virtues, as depicted by his biographer, have thrown both the others into the shade. His vices did not repel the stern moralist, while his talents won the literary censor's admiration, and his disastrous career went straight to the good man's heart. In a word, Johnson loved Savage; and in the strength of that love has composed one of the most interesting and edifying books in our language. It is written in Johnson's very best and |