or by hearing that publishers had thanked goodness that they had done with him. He had long ago earned fame, and its pleasant accompaniment of competence was now to follow. At the time he was writing to Baretti, he had already accepted a pension from the king, of £300 a year; and, when calling on Lord Bute to thank him for this mark of royal favour, the minister had expressly said to him, "It is not given to you for what you are to do, but for what you have done."

Such an income to a man of Johnson's temperate habits not only enabled him to live in comfort, but it gave him a feeling of independence, which, to a person of his proud and indolent disposition, must have added a new zest to life. He gained something, moreover, which he would value still more; he was now in a position to relieve those cases of want and misery, which never failed to excite his compassion, and how numerous those cases were, not even his most intimate friends ever knew. But his prosperity effected other changes in his life. He was able to mix more freely in that social life, in which he took such a keen delight. The poor author, whose shabby dress obliged him to take his meals behind a screen, when friends were dining with his employer, was. to be a guest at the tables of the most distinguished men of the kingdom. The drudge who was "kept waiting in the outer rooms," or "repulsed from the door" of his. patron, was, without solicitation, to be honoured by a private interview with his sovereign. He was to become the object of an enthusiastic hero-worship to many, and especially to a young Scotchman, who was, one day, to write a biography of his "illustrious friend," which was

72

LIFE OF JOHNSON.

to be read wherever the English language is spoken. The famous "Club," which numbered among its members men like Fox and Burke, Goldsmith and Reynolds, was afterwards to be inseparably associated with his name, and he was soon to gather round him that brilliant circle of friends, who are immortalized in the pages of Boswell.

CHAPTER V.

HE pension, which had been conferred upon Johnson,

ΤΗ

added, without doubt, enormously to his happiness, but he must occasionally have felt certain misgivings on the subject. For the political opinions, which he might formerly have expressed, there was no occasion to trouble himself. The Minister, who advised the grant, had not asked him to change his principles, or to give any promises of future support. He would naturally be more guarded in the expression of any partizan feelings, but to this he was quite reconciled. "It is true," he said, "I cannot now curse the House of Hanover, nor would it be decent for me to drink King James's health in the wine, that King George gives me the money to pay for. But, sir, I think that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover, and drinking King James's health, are amply compensated for by three hundred pounds a year.” The pension was not political; it was especially stated to have been conferred for services rendered to literature. But Johnson had in his dictionary defined pension as “an allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a State hireling for treason to his country." No dis

tinction is here drawn between political pensions and those granted for more honourable services, and his adversaries were not slow to take advantage of this omission.

Johnson, moreover, could have had little sympathy with Lord Bute, who was the ostensible mover in the affair. This nobleman, with scant experience of public life, and with no claims to office except his intimacy with the king's mother, had obtained a seat in the Cabinet shortly after the commencement of the new reign, and Pitt, who found his advice no longer heeded, gave up his place as Secretary of State. The Duke of Newcastle, the nominal head of the Government, was delighted to get rid of his brilliant colleague, but soon found that he was not more powerful than before. He still, however, clung to office, but the situation at length became intolerable, and he was forced to resign. Bute immediately became First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister.

Johnson was in principle a strong Tory, and his worst term of abuse was to call his adversary a vile Whig, but this seems to have been merely an abstract idea. Nearly all his personal friends belonged to the party for which, in theory, he professed such a strong aversion. He appears, in fact, to have taken little interest in practical politics. During the last years of the reign of George II., the country had been passing through a period of glory such as never was before known in our history. Our armies and navies had been victorious both in the New and Old World, but of these brilliant events, we find no mention in Johnson's recorded conversation, or correspondence; and politics are never alluded to. In his

two long letters to Baretti, referred to in the last chapter, nothing is said of the struggles going on, first between Bute and Pitt, and afterwards between Bute and the Duke of Newcastle. Of mere party feelings, as they are now understood, we could scarcely expect to hear much, for the distinctive lines, which, before and since, have separated the Whigs from the Tories, had then almost entirely disappeared. "The great parties," writes Burke, a few years afterwards, "which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom, are known to be in a manner entirely dissolved." Those, who were willing to comply with the wishes of the sovereign, were called the 'king's friends'; all the rest were branded as factious. George III. hated the elder Pitt as cordially as, in after days, he detested Charles James Fox. "Here is a man," said Johnson, the year before he died, speaking of the latter statesman, "who has divided the kingdom with Cæsar;" but he afterwards declared, that though he was for the king against Fox, he was for Fox against Pitt. Nonentities, like Lord Bute, or the Duke of Newcastle, and men of ability, like Lord North, were equally willing to carry on the Government as mere private secretaries of the king, and to issue orders and to sign decrees for measures, which they knew to be fraught with evil to the country. Johnson's political pamphlets will be alluded to in due course, but they were only episodes in his literary career, and afford little interest or information. It is time, however, to return to the ordinary events of his life.

In 1763, an incident occurred which gave him great satisfaction. Lucy Porter, who, since the death of his mother, was still living with the faithful servant, Kitty, at