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 : “Sept. 9, 1741. "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, "TO MR. LEVETT; IN LICHField. "December I, 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, "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 "LIFE OF SAVAGE." 31 manliest English: his whole soul has gone into the work and there breathes through every page of it that divine charity which hides the multitude of sins. The world may pronounce what verdict it chooses upon poor Savage's character and conduct; but the most carping critic must admit that Johnson's biography of his friend is one of the finest pieces of special pleading, whatever else, to be found in any language: and by those of us who think we can see deep into its inner spirit, it will ever be held as a kind of sacred work. It was a labour of pure love; is full of the richest moral reflections; and reads like a romance-for Savage's career was a romance in real life. Johnson had been drawn towards this wild son of genius several years before; for, in the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1738, we find the following lines: "Ad RICARDUM SAVAGE. "Humani studium generis cui pectore fervet O colat humanum te foveatque genus." Thee, in whose breast there burns a passion for the human race, So it appears that the fine eye of Johnson-the eye of a pure heart-had discerned in this abandoned man some little germ of that "Enthusiasm of Humanity" which in our time is beginning to be called Divine; upon that he had thrown himself entirely; his faith in goodness had triumphed over all his friend's wild excesses; and he had believed in him to the last. "Those are no proper judges of Savage's conduct," his biographer writes at the close of his work, "who have slumbered away their time on the down of plenty; nor will any wise man presume to say, ‘Had I been in Savage's condition, I should have lived or written better than Savage."" “See how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark! in thine ear: Change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?" "This relation," our Author continues, "will not be wholly without its use, if those who languish under any part of Savage's sufferings shall be enabled to fortify their patience by reflecting that they feel only those afflictions from which the abilities of 32 "LIFE OF SAVAGE." Savage did not exempt him; or those who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregarded the common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence; and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible." Could anything be fairer or kindlier than this? Altogether, this strange fellowship between two men so unlike each other is one of the most beautiful little pictures which it is given to the literary historian to draw, and awakens in the thoughtful reader's mind many reflections. Strange times these two must often have spent together; frequently they were in such extremities of poverty that they could not pay for a bed, and had to wander whole nights in the streets. A Republic of Letters and its Head without a home! Nor can we console ourselves with the thought that these were the only two literary men who ever had to take to the London streets for the same sorrowful reasons. There were many others as destitute of money and shelter on those very same nights. “Sir," said Johnson once, "I honour Derrick for his presence of mind. One night, when Floyd, another poor author, was wandering about the streets in the night, he found Derrick fast asleep upon a bulk; upon being suddenly waked, Derrick started up, My dear Floyd, I am sorry to see you in this destitute state; will you come home with me to my lodgings?'" His lodgings-poor fellow! To such miserable chances were authors exposed a hundred years ago. Yet, in these aimless nocturnal rambles, the two friends with whom we are chiefly concerned at present were not always downcast; for, on one of the homeless nights in particular, we are told they traversed St. James's Square for several hours, cursing the prime minister, and resolving "they would stand by their country!" But there cannot have been much mirth in this wild excitement and, although it is good to know that there were such episodes in Johnson's life, it is far from pleasant to meditate upon them. Soon after Savage's Life was published, a gentleman who had recently dined with Cave and praised the book, was thus accosted |