gether. Davy Garrick is to be with you early the next week, and Mr. Johnfon, to try his fate with a tragedy, and to fee to get himself employed in some tranflation, either from the Latin or the French. Johnfon is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy writer."

How he employed himself upon his first coming to London, is not certainly known. His first lodgings were at the house of Mr. Norris a staymaker in Exeter-Street, in the Strand. Here he found it necessary to practise the most rigid economy; and his Ofellus in the Art of Living in London, is a real character of an Irish painter, who initiated him in the art of living cheaply in London.

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Soon after his arrival in London, he renewed his acquaintance with Mr. Henry Hervey, one of the branches of the Briftol family, whom he had known when he was

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quartered at Litchfield as an officer of the army. At his house he was entertained with a kindness and hofpitality of which he ever afterwards retained a warm remembrance. Not very long before his death, he described this early friend "Harry Hervey," thus: "he was a vicious man, but very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him."

He had now written three acts of his Irene; and he retired for some time to lodgings at Greenwich, where he proceeded in it somewhat farther, and used to compose walking in the Park; but he did not stay long enough in that place to finish it.

At this period, he wished to engage more closely with Mr. Cave, and proposed to him, in a letter dated Greenwich, July 12. 1737, to undertake a translation of Father Paul Sarpi's " History of the Council of Trent," from the French edition of Dr.

Le Courayer. His proposal was accepted; but it should feem from this letter, though subscribed with his own name, that he had not yet been introduced to Mr. Cave.

In the course of the summer, he returned to Litchfield, where he had left his wife; and there he at last finished his tragedy; which was not executed with his rapidity of composition upon other occafions, but was flowly and painfully elaborated. The original unformed sketch of this tragedy, partly in the raw materials of profe, and partly worked up in verse, in his own handwriting, is preferved in the King's Library.

In three months after, he removed to London with his wife; but her daughter, who had lived with them at Edial, was left with her relations in the country. His lodgings were for some time in Woodstock-Street, near Hanover-Square, and afterwards in Castle-Street, near CavendishSquare. His tragedy being, as he thought, completely finished, and fit for the stage, he folicited Mr. Fleetwood, the manager of Drury-Lane Theatre, to have it acted at his house; but Mr. Fleetwood would not accept it.

Upon his coming to London, he was inlisted by Mr. Cave, as a regular coadjutor in his magazine, which, for many years, was his principal resource for employment and support. A confiderable period of his life is lost in saying that he was the hireling of Mr. Cave. The narrative is little diversified by the enumeration of his contributions. But the publications of a writer, like the battles and fieges of a general, are the circumstances which must fix the several eras of his life. In this part of the narrative, the pieces acknowledged by Johnfon to be of his writing, are printed in Italics, and those which are ascribed to him upon good authority, or internal evi

dence, are diftinguished by inverted com

mas.

His first performance in the "Gentleman's Magazine," was a Latin Ode, Ad Urbanum, in March 1738, a tranflation of which, by an unknown correspondent, appeared in the Magazine for May following.

At this period, the misfortunes and mifconduct of Savage had reduced him to the lowest state of wretchedness as a writer for bread; and his visits at St. John's Gate, where the "Gentleman's Magazine" was originally printed, naturally brought Johnfon and him together. Johnson commenced an intimacy with this extraordinary man. Both had great parts, and they were equally under the pressure of want. They had a fellow-feeling, and sympathy united them clofer.

It is melancholy to reflect, that Johnfon and Savage were sometimes in such

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