orks and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate
Dictionary he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment, inserted
bitter and contumelious reflections on the Whig party. The excise,
which was a favorite resource of Whig financiers, he had designated as
a hateful tax. He had railed against the Commissioners of Excise in
language so coarse that they had seriously thought of prosecuting him.
He had with difficulty been prevented from holding up the Lord Privy
Seal by name as an example of the meaning of the word "renegade." A
pension he had defined as a pay given to a state hireling to betray
his country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend to
obey a master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these definitions
would himself be pensioned. But that was a time of wonders. George the
Third had ascended the throne, and had, in the course of a few months,
disgusted many of the old friends, and conciliated many of the old
enemies of his house. The city was becoming mutinous. Oxford was
becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets
and Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of the treasury
was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have no objection to
Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of men of
letters, and Johnson was one of the most eminent, and one of the most
needy men of letters in Europe. A pension of three hundred a year was
graciously offered, and with very little hesitation accepted.

This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. For the
first time since his boyhood he no longer felt the daily goad urging
him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of
anxiety and drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie
in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in
the morning, without fearing either the printer's devil or the
sheriff's officer.

But though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. The influence
exercised by his conversation, directly upon those with whom he lived,
and indirectly on the whole literary world, was altogether without
parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He
had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humor, immense knowledge of
literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As
respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence
which dropped from his lips was as correct in structure