BOOK THE THIRD. CHAPTER I. WRITING THE BEE. 1759. THE Booksellers were never more active than at the close 1759. of 1759. If literature had anything to hope from such Et. 31. exertions, its halcyon days were come. If it could live on magazines and reviews; if strength, subsistence, and respect, lay in employment of the multitudinous force of Grub-street; if demand and supply were law sufficient for its higher interests; literature was prosperous at last, and might laugh at all Pope's prophecies. Every week had its spawn of periodical publications; feeble, but of desperate fecundity. Babblers, and Schemers; Friends, and Advisers; Auditors, Comptrollers, and Grumblers; Spendthrifts, and Bachelors; Free-Enquirers, Scrutators, and Investigators; Englishmen, Freeholders, and Moderators; Sylphs, and Triflers; Rangers, and Cottagers; Templars, Gentlemen, and Skeptics;-in constant succession rose and fell.* "Sons of a day, just "buoyant on the flood," next day might see them "num"bered with the puppies in the mud: " but the parents of * See the list in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iv. 38-97. 1759. the dull blind offspring had meanwhile eaten and drank, Et. 31. and the owners or masters profited. Of magazines alone, weekly and monthly, I will enumerate the specimens which a very few weeks, between the close of 1759 and the beginning of 1760, added to a multitude already wearing out their brief existence. They were: the Royal Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Companion; the Impartial Review, or Literary Journal; the Weekly Magazine, or Gentlemen and Ladies' Polite Companion; the Ladies' Magazine; the Public Magazine; the Imperial Magazine; the Royal Female Magazine; the Universal Review; the Lady's Museum; the Musical Magazine; and the British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and Ladies. See all her progeny, illustrious sight! Behold, and count them, as they rise to light. In homage to the Mother of the sky, A hundred sons, and ev'ry son a God: Not less with glory mighty Dullness crown'd, Shall take thro' Grub-street her triumphant round; And her Parnassus glancing o'er at once, Behold a hundred sons, and each a Dunce. Whether with equal triumph she beheld the new recruit advance to take his place, may admit of question. But her favourite Purdons, Hills, Willingtons, Kenricks, Shiels, Bakers, Guthries, Wotys, Ryders, Collyers, Joneses, Pilkingtons, Huddlestone Wynnes, and Hiffernans, were always at hand to comfort her: and there was an ill-fashioned, out-of-the-way corner, in even her domain, for temporary reception of the Smolletts and the Johnsons; men who owed her no allegiance, but had not yet deserted Grub-street altogether. "It is a street in London," was Johnson's definition, four years before the present, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary "poems: whence any mean production is called Grub-street." Why, a man might enter even Grub-street, then, with bold and cheerful heart, seeing the author of the English Dictionary there. For there, as occasion called, he was still to be seen poor, persevering, proud; Unplaced, unpension'd, no man's heir or slave;" inviting the world to take heed that indeed he was there, tugging at the oar." 1759. Æt. 31. With that great, independent soul of his, Samuel Johnson had no reproach for Fortune: she might come to him now, or stay away for ever. What other kind of man he might have been, if something more than fourpence halfpenny a day had welcomed him in the outset; or if houseless and homeless street-wanderings with Savage, and resolutions to Hodne! stand by his country,* had been forestalled by house and home, and resolution of his country to stand by him; is not in his case a matter of much importance. He dealt with life as he found it; toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail, he grappled with as they came; and the profession of literature he had now quietly, and finally, accepted upon its own terms. Repulsed from the west-end mansion, he turned to the counters of the east; insulted by bookseller Osborne, he knocked him down with one of his own folios; decently paid * Johnson told Murphy that he and Savage, on one occasion, walked round Grosvenor Square till four in the morning; in the course of their conversation not only falling foul of Walpole for laying restraints upon the stage, neglecting the arts, and letting science go unrewarded, but themselves reforming the world generally, dethroning princes, establishing new forms of government, giving laws to different states, and, when at last fatigued with their legislative office, and sorely in need of refreshment and rest, finding themselves both together unable to make up more than the sum of fourpence-halfpenny. Monthly Review, lxxvi. 281-282. And see Murphy's Essay, 17. 2 1759. by bookseller Millar, he told the world to honour him for Et. 31. raising the rewards of books: and treating authorship, since the world would have it so, as any other trade, and still heartily embracing poverty as a trusted and honourable companion, was content in Grub-street, or any other street, to work out his case as he could. "Seven years, my lord, have "now past," he wrote to Lord Chesterfield, on appearance of the Dictionary four years before, "since I waited in your "outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during "which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have "brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one "act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. . . . Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, 66 and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with "help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of "my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has "been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; "till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, "and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity "not to confess obligations where no benefit has been "received; or to be unwilling that the public should con"sider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has "enabled me to do for myself." What! said he in more familiar mood to Garrick, have I sailed a long and difficult voyage round the world of the English language, and does he now send out his cock-boat to tow me into harbour? * * His letter to Thomas Warton announcing the near completion of his Dictionary is less known; yet I do not know that his manly courage and self-reliance have anywhere found more masterly expression. "I now begin to see land, after "having wandered, according to Mr. Warburton's phrase, in this vast sea of words. "What reception I shall meet with on the shore, I know not whether the sound 1759. And from this man, even now, there was nothing to separate the humblest of literary workmen. Here were his words, Et. 31. as a trumpet, to call them to the field; and there he was himself, in person, to animate the struggle. To what, then, should he first look, who, hitherto a compelled and reluctant dweller on the threshold of literature, was now of his own resolute choice advancing within to try his fortune, if not to this great, unyielding figure of Samuel Johnson, for courage and sustainment? There, beyond a doubt, were the thoughts of Oliver Goldsmith now ;-with poverty, not simply endured, but made a badge of honour; with independence, though indeed but a bookseller's servant; without remonstrance or uneasy resistance, should even the worst attendants of the garret continue to be his lot for ever. "He assured me," says the author of the Rambler of his friend Ofellus, "that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a "man to live in London without being contemptible. He "allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence 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 threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for 66 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 could go "abroad and pay visits."* Nor were these the holiday theories 66 "of bells, and acclamations of the people, which Ariosto talks of in his last Canto, or a general murmur of dislike, I know not whether I shall find upon the "coast a Calypso that will court, or a Polypheme that will resist. But if 'Polypheme comes, have at his eye." Boswell, ii. 28. Comparing this with his actual experience, one feels that Ofellus had decidedly the advantage on the whole. It is true that when Johnson first came to London his dinner cost him twopence more. ("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, |