ment. It is 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.

This joint expedition of those two eminent men to the metropolis, was many years afterwards noticed in an allegorical poem on Shakespeare's mulberry tree, by Mr. Lovibond, the ingenious author of "The Tears of OldMayday."2

They were recommended to Mr. Colson,3 an eminent mathematician and master of an academy, by the following letter from Mr. Walmsley :

:

1 Both of them used to talk pleasantly of this their first journey to London. Garrick, evidently meaning to embellish a little, said one day in my hearing, "We rode and tied." And the Bishop of Killaloe (Dr. Barnard) informed me, that at another time, when Johnson and Garrick were dining together in a pretty large company, Johnson humorously ascertaining the chronology of something, expressed himself thus :-"That was the year 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?" Johnson. "Why, yes; when I came with twopence halfpenny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three halfpence in thine." [First published in the additions to the second edition, vol. i., p. xxxiii.-Editor.]

2 Edward Lovibond was a gentlemen, residing at Hampton, whose works were little known in his own day, and are now quite neglected, though Dr. Anderson has introduced them into the Scotch edition of the British Poets, with a life of the author, in a strain of the most hyperbolical and ridiculous panegyric. He died in 1775.—Croker.

3 The Reverend John Colson was bred at Emmanuel College, in Cambridge, and in 1728, when George II. visited that University, was created Master of Arts. About that time he became first master of the Free Grammar School at Rochester, founded by Sir Joseph Williamson. In 1739 he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, on the death of Professor Sanderson, and held that office until 1759, when he died. He published Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, translated from the French of l'Abbé Nodet, 8vo, 1732, and some other tracts. Our author, it is believed, was mistaken in stating him to have been master of an academy. Garrick, probably during his short residence at Rochester, lived in his house as a private pupil. The character of Gelidus, the philosopher, in The Rambler (No. 24), was meant to represent this gentleman. See Mrs. Fiozzi's Anecdotes, p. 49. -Malone.

"DEAR SIR,

TO THE REV. MR. COLSON.

66 Lichfield, March 2. 1736-7.

"I had the favour of yours, and am extremely obliged to you; but I cannot say I had a greater affection for you upon it than I had before, being long since so much endeared to you, as well by an early friendship, as by your many excellent and valuable qualifications; and, had I a son of my own, it would be my ambition, instead of sending him to the university, to dispose of him as this young gentleman is.

66

'He, and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. Samuel Johnson, set out this morning for London together. Davy Garrick to be with you early the next week, and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed in some translation, either from the Latin or the French. Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy-writer. If it should any way lie in your way, I doubt not but you would be ready to recommend and assist your countryman, "G. WALMSLEY."

66

Mrs.

How he employed himself upon his first coming to London is not particularly known.' I never heard that he found any protection or encouragement by the means of Mr. Colson, to whose academy David Garrick went. Lucy Porter told me, that Mr. Walmsley gave him a letter of introduction to Lintot, his bookseller, and that Johnson wrote some things for him; but I imagine this to be a mistake, for I have discovered no trace of it, and I am pretty sure he told me, that Mr. Cave was the first publisher by whom his pen was engaged in London.

He 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 Catherine Street, in the Strand.

One carious 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." [Second edition, vol. i., p. 78.-Editor.]

"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 travelled. 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 sixpence, 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.2

His Ofellus, in the "Art of Living in London,” 3 I have heard him relate, was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practised 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, but was apprehensive of the expense,

1 Cumberland, in his Memoirs, vol. i., p. 355, says that he heard the illustrious scholar (Johnson), who never varied from the truth of fact, assert, that he subsisted himself, for a considerable space of time, upon the scanty pittance of fourpence halfpenny per day.—Croker.

2 At this time his abstinence from wine may, perhaps, be attributed to poverty, but in his subsequent life he was restrained from that indulgence by, as it appears, moral, or rather medical considerations. He found by experience that wine, though it dissipated for a moment, yet eventually aggravated the hereditary disease under which he suffered; and perhaps it may have been owing to a long course of abstinence, that his mental health seems to have been better in the latter than in the earlier portion of his life. He says, in his Prayers and Meditations (Aug. 17th, 1767), " By abstinence from wine and suppers, I obtained sudden and great relief, and had freedom of mind restored to me; which I have wanted for all this year, without being able to find any means of obtaining it." See also post, Sept. 16th, 1773. These remarks are important, because depression of spirits is too often treated on a contrary system, from ignorance of, or inattention, to what may be its real cause. -Croker.

3 Both Boswell and Croker spell the name Ofellus, instead of Ofella. Neither is Croker right when, in a note on this passage, he calls Ofella, a Roman rustic. Horace (Sat. ii. 2. 133) informs us that, in his youth, Ofella was the owner of an estate near Venusia, which was taken from him and conferred on a veteran named Umbrenus.

"Nunc ager Umbreni sub nomine, nuper Ofellæ
Dictus"

and that as "colonus," he rented a farm on the estate which had been formerly his own.-Editor.

"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 sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt-day he went abroad, and paid visits." I have heard him more than once talk of his frugal friend, whom he recollected with esteem and kindness, and did not like to have one smile at the recital. "This man," said he, gravely, 66 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. He borrowed a horse and ten pounds at Birmingham. Finding himself master of so much money, he set off for West Chester, in order to get to Ireland. He returned the horse, and probably the ten pounds too, after he had got home."

Considering Johnson's narrow circumstances in the early part of his life, and particularly at the interesting era of his launching into the ocean of London, it is not to be wondered at, that an actual instance, proved by experience of the possibility of enjoying the intellectual luxury of social life upon a very small income, should deeply engage his attention, and be ever recollected by him as a circumstance of much importance. He amused himself, I remember, by computing how much more expense was absolutely necessary to live upon the same scale with that which his friend described, when the value of money was diminished by the progress of commerce. It may be estimated that double the money might now with difficulty be

sufficient.

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

1 The Hon. Henry Hervey, third [fourth] son of the first Earl of Bristol [born 1700], quitted the army and took orders. He married [in 1730, Catherine the eldest] sister of Sir Thomas Aston, by whom he got

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 mentioned this, among other particulars of his life, which he was kindly communicating to me; and he described this early friend "Harry Hervey," thus: "He was a vicious man,' but very kind to me. If you call a dog 'Hervey,' I shall love him."

He told me he had now written only three acts of his "Irene," and that he retired for some time to lodgings at Greenwich, where he proceeded in it somewhat further, and

the Aston Estate, and assumed the name and arms of that family. Vide Collins' Peerage, third ed., vol. iii., p. 384.

Mr. Hervey's acquaintance and kindness Johnson owed, no doubt, to his friend Mr. Walmsley; who, it will be recollected, married Mrs. Hervey's sister, Margaret Aston. But I doubt whether Mr. Boswell does not antedate this intimacy with Hervey, and Johnson's love of that name by a couple of years-for the first edition of London contained a sneer at Lord Hervey (Henry's brother), for whose name that of Clodio was afterwards substituted.-Croker.

Mr. Croker in the preceding note questions the existence of any intimacy between Johnson and Hervey in or before 1738, because of the sneer at Lord Hervey, Henry Hervey's brother, which occurs in the poem London, published May, 1738.

"And strive in vain to laugh at H- -y's jest,"

and seems to imply that when his intimacy with Henry Hervey was formed, Johnson for H-y substituted Clodio, which we find in the collected editions of Johnson's works. But H- -y occurs not only in the first edition, but in the fourth edition of London, 1739. In the poem, also, as printed in Dodsley's collection, second edition, 1748, vol. i., p. 192, it is still H- -y; in an edition published 1765 H- -y again,

and in the 1782 edition, still H-y. In the Poetical Works of Johnson, first collected in one volume, Lond. 1785, we find the same reading. Nor can we trace when H- -y gives place to Clodio; not, we believe, in any edition published in Johnson's lifetime. Clodio appears in Hawkins', 1787, in Murphy's 1792, and in all subsequent editions. The charming series of letters of young David to Captain Garrick, his father, Fitzgerald's Life of Garrick, vol. i., chap. ii., pp. 10-28, abundantly confirms the fact of Hervey's regiment being quartered at Lichfield.-Editor.

1 For the excesses which Dr. Johnson justly characterizes as vicious, Mr. Hervey, was, perhaps, as much to be pitied as blamed. He was very eccentric. His eldest brother was the celebrated Lord Hervey, Pope's Sporus; the next, Thomas, of whom we shall see more hereafter (Oct., 1766), was also very clever but very mad.-Croker.