of "Irene" did not please the public. Mr. Garrick's zeal carried it
through for nine nights, so that the author had his three nights'
profit; and from a receipt signed by him it appears that his friend Mr.
Robert Dodsley gave him one hundred pounds for the copy, with his usual
reservation of the right of one edition.

On occasion of his play being brought upon the stage, Johnson had a
fancy that as a dramatic author his dress should be more gay than he
ordinarily wore; he therefore appeared behind the scenes, and even in
one of the side boxes, in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace and a
gold laced hat. His necessary attendance while his play was in
rehearsal, and during its performance, brought him acquainted with many
of the performers of both sexes, which produced a more favourable
opinion of their profession than he had harshly expressed in his "Life
of Savage." With some of them he kept up an acquaintance as long as he
and they lived, and was ever ready to show them acts of kindness. He for
a considerable time used to visit the green room, and seemed to take
delight in dissipating his gloom by mixing in the sprightly chit-chat of
the motley circle then to be found there. But at last--as Mr. David Hume
related to me from Mr. Garrick--he denied himself this amusement from
considerations of rigid virtue.

_V.--"The Rambler" and New Acquaintance_

In 1750 Johnson came forth in the character for which he was eminently
qualified, a majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom. The vehicle
he chose was that of a periodical paper, which he knew had, upon former
occasions--those of the "Tattler," "Spectator," and "Guardian"--been
employed with great success.

The first paper of "The Rambler" was published on Tuesday, March 20,
1750, and its author was enabled to continue it without interruption,
every Tuesday and Friday, till Saturday, March 17, 1752, on which day it
closed. During all this time he received assistance on four occasions
only.

Posterity will be astonished when they are told, upon the authority of
Johnson himself, that many of these discourses, which we should suppose
had been laboured with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were
written in haste as the moments pressed, without even being read over by
him before they were printed. Such was his peculiar promptitude of mind.
He was wont to say, "A man may write at any time if he will set himself
doggedly to it."

Though Johnson's ci