CHAP L] WRITING TEE BEE.

1759

definition, four years before the present, much inhabited —"

TRt SI

" 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 Dic-
tionary 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."

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 In'm in the outset; or if houseless and
homeless street-wanderings with Savage, and resolutions to
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 litera-
ture he had now quietly, and finally, accepted upon its own
terms. Eepulsed from the west-end mansion, he turned to
the counters of the east; insulted by bookseller Osborne, he
knocked Mm 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 ofWalpole for laying restraints upon the, stage, neglecting the
arts, and letting science go unrewarded, but themselves reforming the world gene-
rally, dethroning princes, establishing new forms of government, giving laws to differ-
ent 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-balfpenny. Monthly Review, Ixxvi. 281-282. And see
Murphy's Essay, 17. •d ; and, yielding to