his patron;
for, on Walmsley's observing, when some part of it had been read, that
the poet had already involved his heroine in such distress, that he did
not see what further he could do to excite the commiseration of the
audience, Johnson replied, "that he could put her into the
Ecclesiastical Court." Garrick, who was to be placed at Colson's
academy, accompanied his former instructor on this expedition to London,
at the beginning of March, 1737. It does not appear that Mr. Walmsley's
recommendation of him to Colson, whom he has described under the
character of Gelidus[2], in the twenty-fourth paper of the Rambler, was
of much use. He first took lodgings in Exeter-street in the Strand, but
soon retired to Greenwich, for the sake of completing his tragedy, which
he used to compose, walking in the Park.

From Greenwich, he addressed another letter to Cave, with proposals for
translating Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent, with the notes
of Le Courayer. Before the summer was expired, he returned for Mrs.
Johnson, whom he had left at Lichfield, and remaining there three
months, at length finished Irene. On his second visit to London, his
lodgings were first in Woodstock-street, near Hanover Square, and then
in Castle-street, near Cavendish Square. His tragedy, which was brought
on the stage twelve years after by Garrick, having been at this time
rejected by the manager of the playhouse, he was forced to relinquish
his hopes of becoming a dramatic writer, and engaged himself to write
for the Gentleman's Magazine. The debates in Parliament were not then
allowed to be given to the public with the same unrestricted and
generous freedom with which it is now permitted to report them. To elude
this prohibition, and gratify the just curiosity of the country, the
several members were designated by fictitious names, under which they
were easily discoverable; and their speeches in both Houses of
Parliament, which was entitled the Senate of Lilliput, were in this
manner imparted to the nation in the periodical work above-mentioned. At
first, Johnson only revised these reports; but he became so dexterous in
the execution of his task, that he required only to be told the names of
the speakers, and the side of the question to be espoused, in order to
frame the speeches himself; an artifice not wholly excusable, which
afterwards occasioned him some self-reproach, and even at the time
pleased him so little, that he did not conse