a synonym for the
fortunes of struggling writers.[195] Often, Johnson tells us, he walked the
streets all night long, in dreary weather, when it was too cold to sleep,
without food or shelter. But he wrote steadily for the booksellers and for
the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and presently he became known in London and
received enough work to earn a bare living.

The works which occasioned this small success were his poem, "London," and
his _Life of the Poet Savage_, a wretched life, at best, which were perhaps
better left without a biographer. But his success was genuine, though
small, and presently the booksellers of London are coming to him to ask him
to write a dictionary of the English language. It was an enormous work,
taking nearly eight years of his time, and long before he had finished it
he had eaten up the money which he received for his labor. In the leisure
intervals of this work he wrote "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and other
poems, and finished his classic tragedy of _Irene_.

Led by the great success of the _Spectator_, Johnson started two magazines,
_The Rambler_ (1750--1752) and _The Idler_ (1758--1760). Later the
_Rambler_ essays were published in book form and ran rapidly through ten
editions; but the financial returns were small, and Johnson spent a large
part of his earnings in charity. When his mother died, in 1759, Johnson,
although one of the best known men in London, had no money, and hurriedly
finished _Rasselas_, his only romance, in order, it is said, to pay for his
mother's burial.

It was not till 1762, when Johnson was fifty-three years old, that his
literary labors were rewarded in the usual way by royalty, and he received
from George III a yearly pension of three hundred pounds. Then began a
little sunshine in his life. With Joshua Reynolds, the artist, he founded
the famous Literary Club, of which Burke, Pitt, Fox, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and
indeed all the great literary men and politicians of the time, were
members. This is the period of Johnson's famous conversations, which were
caught in minutest detail by Boswell and given to the world. His idea of
conversation, as shown in a hundred places in Boswell, is to overcome your
adversary at any cost; to knock him down by arguments, or, when these fail,
by personal ridicule; to dogmatize on every possible question, pronounce a
few oracles, and then desist with the air of victory. Concerning the
philosopher Hume's view of death he says: "Sir, if he