David’s devoted wife outlived him for over forty years, keenly interested to the last in all matters theatrical, and a well-known figure in the Abbey, where, little and bent, she often made her way to the tomb which held him she had so loved, and standing there would readily recount over and over again to willing listeners the triumphs of "her Davy." Johnson, as we have seen, settled down in London with the intention of making literature pay. "No man but a blockhead," he said in his strongest manner, "ever wrote except for money." Perhaps it was for opinions such as these that his wife, more than twenty years older than himself, declared him to be the most sensible man that lived. A curious figure he must have seemed to those booksellers of whom he demanded work as a translator, mightily tall and broadly made, with a face which he twirled and twisted about in a strange fashion, features scarred by disease, eyes which were of little use to him, and a manner pompous and overbearing, though redeemed by a kindliness of heart not to be concealed. But he managed to struggle along, writing squibs or pamphlets, reporting speeches in Parliament, trying his hand at plays or poetry, and all the while working away at his Great Dictionary, for which when finished he was to receive £1500, he out of that sum paying his copyists and assistants. He founded a club at which he began to make his reputation as a talker, and out of those conversations with his special friends there came to him the idea of starting a newspaper on the lines of Addison’s _Spectator_. But Johnson’s heavy hand, his love of long discourses, and the natural melancholy of his nature, did not fit him for work such as this. His _Rambler_ only lasted for two years, and certainly made him no fortune, though it may have helped him to exist during that time. His Dictionary, when it was at last completed, gave him a surer position in the literary world of London, and he was paid the sum of £100 for his story of "Rasselas," but most of this went in paying for the last illness and funeral of his mother, and Johnson seems to have been sadly in need of money. Through the influence of some friends, the king, George III. who declared that he was most anxious to offer "brighter prospects to men of literary merit," proposed to give Johnson a pension of £300 a year. At first he would not hear of accepting it—indeed, there was a rather formidable difficulty in the way, for in his Dictionary he had defined the word pension as being "generally understood to mean pay given to a State hireling for treason to his country." However, the explanations and persuasions of his friends at last overcame the obstacle, and from that time forward he became one of the best known public characters. A favourite such as David Garrick he could never have aspired to be, and to fashionable folks, especially to ladies, he was an untidy, conceited, rugged old