However, the "worthy, modest, and ingenious Mr Robert Dodsley had taste enough to perceive its uncommon merit, and thought it creditable to have a share in it." Now this poem may not attract us very much to-day. Boswell, of course, thought it "one of the noblest productions in our language," but to understand it properly we need to know something of the politics of the time, especially of the Tory feeling against Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister who said that "every man had his price"; we need to know something, too, of the poem by Juvenal, of which it is an imitation. But a few lines are quoted here, because they bring out very clearly the state of Johnson's mind at the time. He is a bitter opponent of the corrupt government of the day and its weak concessions to Spain: Grant me, kind heaven, to find some happier place, Where honesty and sense are no disgrace ... Here let those reign, whom pensions can incite To vote a patriot black, a courtier white; Explain their country's dear-bought rights away, And plead for pirates in the face of day.[3] [Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF _The Gentleman's Magazine_, March, 1738] He feels his own poverty keenly: This mournful truth is ev'ry where confess'd SLOW RISES WORTH, BY POVERTY DEPRESS'D. "We may easily conceive" says Boswell "with what feeling a great mind like this, cramped and galled by narrow circumstances, uttered this last line, which he marked by capitals." _London_ was a success. "Everybody was delighted with it; and there being no name to it, the first buz of the literary circles was 'here is an unknown poet, greater even than Pope.' And it is recorded in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ of that year [1738], that it 'got into the second edition in the course of a week.'" But Johnson got no more than ten guineas for his work. Truly, as Boswell says, "he felt the hardships of writing for bread." So poor, indeed, did his prospects seem, that he thought of turning schoolmaster again or of entering the law. But he had no university degree and there seemed no escape from "the drudgery of authourship"--unless he should take the advice of Mr Wilcox. "Mr Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an author, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a significant look, said 'You had better buy a porter's knot.'" Of his life during the first ten years after his arrival in London we do not know many details. He was miserably poor, but not entirely friendless. His intimate companion for some time was Richard Savage, whom "misfortunes and misconduct had reduced to the lowest state of wretchedness as a writer for bread."