was his home for the rest of his life. Efforts to get _Irene_
performed were unsuccessful, but he soon began to write regularly for
the _Gentleman's Magazine_, of which he held so high an opinion that he
looked "with reverence" on the house where it was printed. To this he
contributed essays and was soon employed to write the _Parliamentary
Debates_ which, in the days before reporters, were made up with
fictitious names from such scanty notes as could be got of the actual
speeches. There is a story of his being, many years later, in a
company who were praising a famous oration of Chatham, and were
naturally a good deal startled by his quietly saying, "That speech I
wrote in a garret in Exeter Street." He continued to do this work till
1743 when he became aware that the speeches were taken as authentic and
refused to be "accessory to the propagation of falsehood." But, while
engaged in it, he had had no scruples about taking care "that the Whig
dogs should not have the best of it."

A much more important matter than this hack-work was the publication of
his _London_, a poem in imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal. This
appeared in May 1738. He got ten guineas for it, which he was in no
position to despise; but he also got something {96} much more
important, an established name in the world of letters. Every one
talked of him, and Pope, who published his "1738" in the same year, was
not only generous enough to inquire about him, and to say when told
that the author of _London_ was some obscure man, "He will soon be
_deterre_," but also to try to get him an Irish degree of M.A. This
was in view of some attempts Johnson made to escape from dependence on
journalism for his daily bread: but they were all unsuccessful, and
till he received his pension his only source of income was what his
various writings produced. In such circumstances he naturally wrote
many things of quite ephemeral interest which call for no mention now.
Perhaps the only prose work of permanent value he produced in these
years was the life of his mysterious friend, Richard Savage. This
curious volume appeared in 1744. The subject of it died in 1743. He
and Johnson had been companions both in extreme poverty and in the
intellectual pleasures which in such men poverty is unable to
annihilate. Mrs. Johnson seems to have been out of London at this
time, and the two struggling men of letters often passed nights
together, walking and talking