In 1734 he returned to Litchfield, and there issued pro posals for an edition of the Latin poems of Politian, with the history of Latin poetry, from the era of Petrarch to the time of Politian, together with a life ol Politian. The sub scription, however, was not enough to encourage him to proceed. Disappointed in this scheme, he offered his ser vices to Mr. Cave. the proprietor and editor of the Gentle man's Magazine. On this occasion he suggested some itn provements in the management of the Magazine, and spacitied the articles which he was ready to supply. Cave answered his letters ; but it does not appear that any agreement was formed between them at this time. At this period, in his 25th year, when his finances must have been very low, and his prospects very precarious, he adopt ed that happy mode of extricating himself from his diffi culties, to which men of genius often resort. that of taking to himself a wife. His choice was a Mrs. Porter, the widow of a mercer in Birmingham, who was in her 48th year. In spite of this disparity of their ages, Johnson gravely told his friend, Mr. Topham Beauclerk. who arch ly repeated it, "that it was a love marriage on both sides." His bride had a fortune of eight hundred pounds ; and with part of this money he hired a house at Edial, near Litchfield, where young gentlemen were to be boarded, and taught the Greek and Latin languages. The scheme, however, did not succeed In the space of a year and a hall he had only found three pupils, one of whom was Da vid Garrick. During his residence at Edial, he wrote a considerable part of his which his friend Gilbert Walmsey, registrar of the ccclesiastial court ol Litchfield, a man of letters and generosity, advised him to prepare for the stage.
Finding his academy so unlikely to succeed, he de termined to repair to London, and there to try his fortune. Garrick, his pupil, had formed the same resolution, and, in March 1737, they arrived in the metropolis together One of his first employments in London was to proceed with the composition of his tragedy. He also renewed his application to Cave, by whom he was employed in translating the history of the Council of Trent, and for the part of the work which he executed he received 4W. but it was dropt upon the announcement of a rival translation. In the course of the summer he went back to Litchfield, where he had left Mrs. Johnson—finished his tragedy, and returned at the end of three months, with his wife, to Lon don, where he endeavoured to prevail on Fleetwood, the patentee of Drury Lane, to accept it. Being unsuccessful in this attempt, he resumed his literary drudgery, and be came a principal contributor to Cave's Magazine. For that work he supplied, among many various articles, the debates in Parliament. These were given under the fie don of debates in the senate of Lilliput, and the speakers were disguised under feigned names. Guthrie, a writer of history, for a time composed these speeches from such heads as he could bring away in his memory. Johnson first assisted in this department, and then entirely filled it. The public was highly delighted with the extraordinary eloquence which Johnson displayed in these compositions, which were almost exclusively the product of his own in vention. In process of time he came to consider this de ceit as an unjustifiable imposition on the world. It is probable, however, that he generally adhered to the tenor of argument ready employed by the parliamentary speak ers, otherwise his account of the debates could scarcely have passed at the time for genuine. He owned that he was not quite impartial in dealing out his reason and rhe toric ; but took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it. Mr. Chalmers, in his edition of the British poets, (Life of Johnson) has announced his having made the discovery, that Johnson was at one time editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, and had a regular salary of 100/.
but that must have been at sonic distance of time from his first connexion with the work. His apparent poverty-. when he writes to Cave with the signature of Imfirunsus, seems to he with difficulty reconcileable to the supposition of his having had, at that early stage of his career, so considera able a settled income.
In the year 1738,• he rose at once to public notice by the publication of his London, in imitation of the third satire of Juvenal. Dodsley gave him ten guineas for the copyright of this poem, and such was the state of literary property at the time, that he considered it a liberal price. His Lon don came out in the same morning with Pope's " Seven teen hundred and thirty-eight." The former poem imme diately brought its unknown author a reputation, that made him be compared with the reigning bard of the time ; and Pope himself was among the first to acknowledge its me rit, and to predict his future consequence. It is at this very period when he could be said to have first begun to taste the only consolation of an author's life—retillation, that we find him making serious efforts to settle himself in some other profession for a livelihood. would have accepted of the mastership of the school ol Appleby in Leicestershire, the salary of which was about 60/ a year; but the laws of the school required that the candidate should lie a master of arts ; and the University of Oxford, when applied to for a degree, refused to grant it. In tats unsuccessful effort for a degree, Pope interested himselt in Johnson's behalf ; although he knew him only by narree as author of London. About the same time he formed design of studying the civil law, with a view to practise In Doctor's Commons. This scheme, also, was rendered ab ortive for want of a degree, and he was obliged to resume his labours in the Gentleman's Magazine. His produc tions from this time became more numerous than it is possible to particularize in any condensed account of our author. He published. in 1739, an "ironical" vindication of the licencers of the stage, against the scandalous asper sions of the author of " Gustavus Vasa." In this same year his attachment to the Tory, or rather the Jacobite party, was shewn in an humorous pamphlet, entitled Mar mar .N'orfoleiense, consisting of a supposed ancient prophe cy in monkish Latin rhymes, with an explanation. For some years he composed biographical articles in the Gen tleman's Magazine, full of that animated and shrewd cast of language and thought, which he brought into English biography. His life of Savage, published separately in 1744, forms a sort of era in the record of his prose writ ings. He had been intimate with Savage for several years; and if we may judge of Johnson, by the circumstance of his living for a time separated from his wife, as well as by the poverty and midnight rambles in which Savage and he shared, it would appear that the moral biographer him self had been drawn, for a while, into the same follies, dis sipations, and idleness, of his ill-starred brother genius. But the effect of his companionship on Johnson's habits was not lasting, and, to his knowledge of Savage, we are in debted for one of the most interesting and instructive pic tures of an individual mind that was ever exhibited. No one who has read the life of Savage can have failed to ac knowledge the eloquence with which he describes the suf ferings of unfortunate genius, and the candour with which he traces his faults ; whilst he throws a transparent veil of compassion and charity, that softens, without hiding, those vices that would offend us in closer view.