iberal men, he certainly failed, whether from carelessness or want
of skill, to turn them to as much profit as many less celebrated rivals.
Meanwhile, pecuniary success of this kind was beyond any reasonable
hopes. A man who has to work like his own dependent Levett, and to make
the "modest toil of every day" supply "the wants of every day," must
discount his talents until he can secure leisure for some more
sustained effort. Johnson, coming up from the country to seek for work,
could have but a slender prospect of rising above the ordinary level of
his Grub Street companions and rivals. One publisher to whom he applied
suggested to him that it would be his wisest course to buy a porter's
knot and carry trunks; and, in the struggle which followed, Johnson must
sometimes have been tempted to regret that the advice was not taken.

The details of the ordeal through which he was now to pass have
naturally vanished. Johnson, long afterwards, burst into tears on
recalling the trials of this period. But, at the time, no one was
interested in noting the history of an obscure literary drudge, and it
has not been described by the sufferer himself. What we know is derived
from a few letters and incidental references of Johnson in later days.
On first arriving in London he was almost destitute, and had to join
with Garrick in raising a loan of five pounds, which, we are glad to
say, was repaid. He dined for eightpence at an ordinary: a cut of meat
for sixpence, bread for a penny, and a penny to the waiter, making out
the charge. One of his acquaintance had told him that a man might live
in London for thirty pounds a year. Ten pounds would pay for clothes; a
garret might be hired for eighteen-pence a week; if any one asked for an
address, it was easy to reply, "I am to be found at such a place."
Threepence laid out at a coffee-house would enable him to pass some
hours a day in good company; dinner might be had for sixpence, a
bread-and-milk breakfast for a penny, and supper was superfluous. On
clean shirt day you might go abroad and pay visits. This leaves a
surplus of nearly one pound from the thirty.

Johnson, however, had a wife to support; and to raise funds for even so
ascetic a mode of existence required steady labour. Often, it seems, his
purse was at the very lowest ebb. One of his letters to his employer is
signed _impransus_; and whether or not the dinnerless condition was in
this case accidental, or significant of absolut