He was compelled to give up writing tragedies, and write for a livelihood; but London was overcrowded with impecunious journalists, and he received the merest pittance in return for the most arduous species of literary drudgery. The author of "Irene," on his arrival in London, was not more incontestably the literary helot at the mercy of Cave, Millar, and Osborne, than was Gerald Griffin the typical booksellers' hack amid shuffling reviewers and extorting publishers. Johnson at the outset of his literary career received but five guineas for a quarto English translation of "Lobos Voyage to Abyssinia." Griffin, after working for weeks received two guineas for a translation of a volume and a half of Prevot's works. But he was not to be easily dismayed by first reverses of fortune. He had long ago made himself familiar with the catalogue of miseries in the literary martyrology beginning with Nash and Otway, and ending with his friend Banim. Early intimacy with distress and disappointment would but stimulate him the better to conquer both. He would sacrifice everything, consistent with a stainless name and an honorable career, in the attainment of his cherished end--the society of friends, the little luxuries of a frugal table, the modest though comfortable room in which he had hitherto lived and toiled. Poor Gerald! he had yet to learn when his most ambitious yearnings had been fully realized, that worldly honors do not satisfy the cravings of a Christian heart, that the most imperishable coronal of true success is woven of deeds little, lowly, and seemingly contemptible, and that labor spent in purely secular pursuits is labor spent in vain. But the nobler promptings of his nature were as yet unheard amid the discord in which he lived.