It was a dog’s life, indeed, that he led there with his literary brethren.  Many of the writers of the day, who are ridiculed in Pope’s heartless Dunciad, having no wealthy patrons to support them, lived largely in the streets and taverns, sleeping on an ash heap or under a wharf, like rats; glad of a crust, and happy over a single meal which enabled them to work for a while without the reminder of hunger.  A few favored ones lived in wretched lodgings in Grub Street, which has since become a synonym for the fortunes of struggling writers.[195] Often, Johnson tells us, he walked the streets all night long, in dreary weather, when it was too cold to sleep, without food or shelter.  But he wrote steadily for the booksellers and for the Gentleman’s Magazine, and presently he became known in London and received enough work to earn a bare living.

The works which occasioned this small success were his poem, “London,” and his Life of the Poet Savage, a wretched life, at best, which were perhaps better left without a biographer.  But his success was genuine, though small, and presently the booksellers of London are coming to him to ask him to write a dictionary of the English language.  It was an enormous work, taking nearly eight years of his time, and long before he had finished it he had eaten up the money which he received for his labor.  In the leisure intervals of this work he wrote “The Vanity of Human Wishes” and other poems, and finished his classic tragedy of Irene.

Led by the great success of the Spectator, Johnson started two magazines, The Rambler (1750—­1752) and The Idler (1758—­1760).  Later the Rambler essays were published in book form and ran rapidly through ten editions; but the financial returns were small, and Johnson spent a large part of his earnings in charity.  When his mother died, in 1759, Johnson, although one of the best known men in London, had no money, and hurriedly finished Rasselas, his only romance, in order, it is said, to pay for his mother’s burial.

It was not till 1762, when Johnson was fifty-three years old, that his literary labors were rewarded in the usual way by royalty, and he received from George III a yearly pension of three hundred pounds.  Then began a little sunshine in his life.  With Joshua Reynolds, the artist, he founded the famous Literary Club, of which Burke, Pitt, Fox, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and indeed all the great literary men and politicians of the time, were members.  This is the period of Johnson’s famous conversations, which were caught in minutest detail by Boswell and given to the world.  His idea of conversation, as shown in a hundred places in Boswell, is to overcome your adversary at any cost; to knock him down by arguments, or, when these fail, by personal ridicule; to dogmatize on every possible question, pronounce a few oracles, and then desist with the air of victory.  Concerning the philosopher Hume’s view of death he says: