CHAP.V.] FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSOX. ' 305

that the author of the English Dictionary should " dip his 176-2.
" pen in faction " (these were Bute's own words), had signified M. 34.
through the premier his pleasure to grant to Samuel
Johnson three hundred pounds a year. " He fell into a
" profound meditation, and his own definition of a pensioner
" occurred to him." He was told that "he, at least, did not
" come within the definition;" but it was not till after dinner
with Murphy at the Mitre on the following day, that he
consented to wait on Bute and accept the proffered bounty. *
To be pensioned with the fraudulent and contemptible
Shebbeare, so lately pilloried for a Jacobite libel on the Ke-
volution of '88 ; to find himself in the same Bute-list with a
Scotch court-architect, with a Scotch court-painter, with the
infamous David Mallet, and with Johnny Home, must have
chafed Sam Johnson's pride a little; and when, in a few
more months, as author of another English Dictionary, old
Sheridan the actor received two hundred a year (because his
theatre had suffered in the Dublin riots, pleaded Wedder-
burne; because he had gone to Edinburgh to teach Bute's
friend to talk English, said Wilkes), it had become very
plain to him that Lord Bute knew nothing of literature.
But he had compromised no independence in the course he
took, and might afford to laugh at the outcry which followed.
" I wish my pension were twice as large, sir," he said after-
wards at Davies's, " that they might make twice as much
" noise." t

But Davies was now grown into so much importance, and
his shop was a place so often memorable for the persons
who met there, that more must be said of both in a new
chapter.

* See Murphy's account in Bis Essay prefixed to Johnson's works, 51. Ed. 1825.
•f IlosweU, ii. 234 note.vigorous pretensions to either is