"He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was then meditating to try his fortune in London, but was apprehensive of the expence, 'that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at eighteen-pence a week; few people would enquire where he lodged; and, if they did, it was easy to say 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending three-pence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On _clean-shirt-day_ he went abroad, and paid visits." It was this world of "Grub Street" (a street which became famous about the end of the 16th century as the home of poor authors and whose name was used generally to mean the world in which they lived[2]) which Johnson had to face. He must try and make a living by his pen. He had, of course, no "patron," no rich man who would help to pay for the printing of his books, recommend them to his fashionable friends and perhaps secure their author a government post which would bring with it light duties and a comfortable income. Except for Harry Hervey ("a vicious man, but very kind to me," he told Boswell, "If you call a dog HERVEY, I shall love him") Johnson hardly had a friend in London. What was he to write? Who was to buy his manuscripts? Newspapers, indeed, were everywhere. They consisted mostly of four pages containing a little news, a little gossip, a little poetry, and many advertisements. There was not much hope for Johnson here. A journal founded in 1731 gave him a better opening. "_The Gentleman's Magazine_, begun and carried on by Mr Edward Cave, under the name of SYLVANUS URBAN, had attracted the notice and esteem of Johnson, in an eminent degree, before he came to London.... He told me, that when he first saw St John's Gate, the place where that deservedly popular miscellany was originally printed, he 'beheld it with reverence.'" To Mr Cave, therefore, Johnson wrote, having observed in his paper "very uncommon offers of encouragement to men of letters," and _The Gentleman's Magazine_ was for many years "his principal source for employment and support." In the summer of 1737 he went back to Lichfield, where he finished a tragedy called _Irene_, of which we shall hear something later. On his return to London he brought his wife with him, and in London he lived for the remaining 47 years of his life. It was fitting, therefore, that the first of his writings which brought him fame should be a poem called _London_. It was offered to, and refused by, several booksellers, an incident afterwards commemorated in these lines: Will no kind patron JOHNSON own? Shall JOHNSON friendless range the town? And every publisher refuse The offspring of his happy Muse?