A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours, he published a work which at once placed him high among the writers of his age.It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in London had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets which overhung the streets of Rome.Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by many readers thought superior to the originals.What Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal.The enterprise was bold and yet judicious.For between Johnson and Juvenal there was much in common, much more certainly than between Pope and Horace.
Johnson's London appeared without his name in May 1738.He received only ten guineas for this stately and vigorous poem; but the sale was rapid, and the success complete.A second edition was required within a week.Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of literature.It ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was welcomed.He made inquiries about the author of London.Such a man, he said, could not long be concealed.The name was soon discovered; and Pope with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor young poet.The attempt failed; and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack.
It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer of the generation which was going out, and the most eminent writer of the generation which was coming in, ever saw each other.They lived in very different circles, one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving pamphleteers and index makers.
Among Johnson's associates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket; who composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober; and who was at last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk:
Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the board where he sate cross-legged; and the penitent impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night with literary and theological conversation at an alehouse in the city.But the most remarkable of the persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice, who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribands in Saint James's Square, and had lain with fifty-pounds' weight of iron on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate.This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty.His pen had failed him.His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by the riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their advice.He now lived by begging.
He dined on venison and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea.If his questing had been unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat, and lay down to rest under the Piazza of Covent Garden in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could get to the furnace of a glass house.Yet, in his misery, he was still an agreeable companion.He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and brilliant world from which he was now an outcast.He had observed the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over decent.During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not without tears.Johnson remained in London to drudge for Cave.Savage went to the West of England, lived there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743, died, penniless and heart-broken, in Bristol gaol.
Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly excited about his extraordinary character, and his not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub Street.The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety; and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our language.But the little work, with all its faults, was a masterpiece.No finer specimen of literary biography existed in any language, living or dead;and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the author was destined to be the founder of a new school of English eloquence.
The life of Savage was anonymous; but it was well known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer.During the three years which followed, he produced no important work, but he was not, and indeed could not be, idle.The fame of his abilities and learning continued to grow.Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise of Warburton was then no light thing.Such was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous work of preparing a Dictionary of the English language, in two folio volumes.The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task.