for seeming undesigned, used to give a pleasant description of this green-room finery, as related by the author himself; “But,” said Johnson, with great gravity, “I soon laid aside my gold-laced hat, lest it should make me proud.”  The amount of the three benefit nights for the tragedy of Irene, it is to be feared, was not very considerable, as the profit, that stimulating motive, never invited the author to another dramatic attempt.  Some years afterwards, when the present writer was intimate with Garrick, and knew Johnson to be in distress, he asked the manager, why he did not produce another tragedy for his Lichfield friend?  Garrick’s answer was remarkable:  “When Johnson writes tragedy, ‘declamation roars, and passion sleeps:’  when Shakespeare wrote, he dipped his pen in his own heart.”

There may, perhaps, be a degree of sameness in this regular way of tracing an author from one work to another, and the reader may feel the effect of a tedious monotony; but, in the life of Johnson, there are no other landmarks.  He was now forty years old, and had mixed but little with the world.  He followed no profession, transacted no business, and was a stranger to what is called a town life.  We are now arrived at the brightest period, he had hitherto known.  His name broke out upon mankind with a degree of lustre that promised a triumph over all his difficulties.  The life of Savage was admired, as a beautiful and instructive piece of biography.  The two imitations of Juvenal were thought to rival even the excellence of Pope; and the tragedy of Irene, though uninteresting on the stage, was universally admired in the closet, for the propriety of the sentiments, the richness of the language, and the general harmony of the whole composition.  His fame was widely diffused; and he had made his agreement with the booksellers for his English dictionary at the sum of fifteen hundred guineas; a part of which was to be, from time to time, advanced, in proportion to the progress of the work.  This was a certain fund for his support, without being obliged to write fugitive pieces for the petty supplies of the day.  Accordingly we find that, in 1749, he established a club, consisting of ten in number, at Horseman’s, in Ivy lane, on every Tuesday evening.  This is the first scene of social life to which Johnson can be traced, out of his own house.  The members of this little society were, Samuel Johnson; Dr. Salter, father of the late master of the Charter house; Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Ryland, a merchant; Mr. Payne, a bookseller, in Paternoster row; Mr. Samuel Dyer, a learned young man; Dr. William M’Ghie, a Scotch physician; Dr. Edmund Barker, a young physician; Dr. Bathurst, another young physician; and sir John Hawkins.  This list is given by sir John, as it should seem, with no other view than to draw a spiteful and malevolent character of almost every one of them.  Mr. Dyer, whom sir John says he loved with the affection of a brother, meets with the harshest treatment, because