well of you before; but I did not imagine you could have written anything equal to this." "Distant praise," says JOHNSON, "from whatever quarter, is not so delightful as that of a wife whom a man loves and esteems. Her approbation may be said to come home to his bosom, and being so near its effect is most sensible and permanent."

Mrs. Johnson had not only discriminating judgment, but also a fortune of eight hundred pounds: a considerable sum in those days, especially to the needy adventurer. But money can be too dearly purchased; she was a widow, and Boswell quotes JOHNSON as having said, that to marry a widow when one might have a maid is a very foolish thing.

JOHNSON shortly after his marriage opened an academy, or, in the language of Lord Auchinleck, "he keeped a schule and caauld it an academy." However, like Goldsmith and Carlyle, he did not find the work of dominie a congenial one, and quickly betook himself to London in order that he might better his fortune. After one or two fruitless attempts to find literary employment, one publisher to whom he applied advised, after scann

ing him from head to foot, that he had better look out for two knots and be a porter. He at last waited upon Cave, a little oily, cautious, but kindly man, publisher of the "Gentleman's Magazine," who engaged him to write the Parliamentary Reports for his magazine, a most difficult and delicate task, as the reports did not contain what was really spoken, for they were not allowed to publish these outside the walls of St. Stephen's. From scanty notes Johnson had to imagine what was said by speakers on both sides of the House, under assumed, but well-known names. How well he did this work may be inferred from the fact, that one evening at the dinner-table of Foote (of whom he once said, "Foote is quite impartial, for he tells lies of everybody "), a gentleman present, of no mean authority, said that a certain speech of Mr. Pitt's was the finest he had ever read; better than anything in Demosthenes. JOHNSON, who was present, in his own blunt way said, "Sir, I wrote that speech in a garret." When the company praised his impartiality he replied, "That is not quite true; I saved appearances tolerably well,

but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it."

About this time JOHNSON made the acquaintanceship of Savage, the reputed son of Lord Rivers, who had seen society in all its phases, from the highest to the lowest. He had eaten turtle and drunk champagne with the Premier of England, and listened to his indecent jokes. He had consorted with thieves and vagabonds, and with them feasted on the crust and drank of the spring. JOHNSON and Savage formed an ardent attachment for each other. Both were poor, both were outcasts, both were struggling hard for a bare existence, and when their combined purses were unable to purchase them a lodging, they would walk together the lonely city streets, without bed, but, as Carlyle says, not without friendly converse, and such converse as was not producable in the proudest drawing-room of London. Shortly after poor Savage died in the debtors' prison of Bristol there appeared an anonymous biography of him which startled the literary world— the ablest biography of that or any other age. It

was written by JOHNSON in thirty-six hours. About this time he was miserably poor, living in a garret in that great city which one day was to be filled with his fame: "The greatest soul," as Carlyle says, "in all England, and provision made for it of fourpence halfpenny a day." The problem which he had now to solve was how he could raise himself above Grub Street, and being a drudge and literary hack. He had indeed come up to the great Metropolis from the city of his birth with a tragedy in his pocket, but, for the present at least, it had no chance of publication. After the publication of the life of his friend Savage, however, things seem to have brightened for him. He was still very poor; not indeed living on fourpence halfpenny a day, as he had done with Savage, yet thinking that he had dined, and dined well, on sixpence worth of meat and a pennyworth of bread, in one of the pot houses in Drury Lane.

Meanwhile was published his poem "London," in May, 1738. It has been said that JOHNSON offered it to several booksellers, none of whom had taste or judgment sufficient to recognise its trans

cendant merits. To this fact Derrick alludes in

these words:

"Will no kind patron JOHNSON own?

Shall JOHNSON friendless range the town?
And every publisher refuse

The offspring of his happy Muse?"

Dodsley at last had taste and courage enough to purchase it, the purchase price being the mighty sum of ten guineas. It at once gave its author a name and a standing in the world of literature. It had the good fortune to attract the notice of Pope, then the great literary magnate. After reading the anonymous poem he said, "This man will soon be déterré. It also attracted the notice of General Oglethorpe, who became a friend of JOHNSON'S for life. A second edition of the poem was I called for in a week.

One cannot help a sigh who reads his bitter but eloquent denunciations of a city life, as one of corruption and wickedness, of insincerity and oppression, especially on reading that line so sadly true in his own case, and which he wrote in capitals, "Slow rises worth by poverty oppressed." It is