friendship, as by your many excellent and valuable qualifications; and,
had I a son of my own, it would be my ambition, instead of sending him
to the University, to dispose of him as this young gentleman is.

'He, and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. Samuel Johnson, set out this
morning for London together. Davy Garrick is to be with you early the
next week, and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to
get himself employed in some translation, either from the Latin or the
French. Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes
will turn out a fine tragedy-writer. If it should any way lie in your
way, doubt not but you would be ready to recommend and assist your
countryman.

'G. WALMSLEY.'

How he employed himself upon his first coming to London is not
particularly known.'

* One curious anecdote was communicated by himself to Mr.
John Nichols. Mr. Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed
by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an
authour, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a
significant look, said, 'You had better buy a porter's
knot.' He however added, 'Wilcox was one of my best
friends.'--BOSWELL.

He had a little money when he came to town, and he knew how he could
live in the cheapest manner. His first lodgings were at the house of Mr.
Norris, a staymaker, in Exeter-street, adjoining Catharine-street, in
the Strand. 'I dined (said he) very well for eight-pence, with very good
company, at the Pine Apple in New-street, just by. Several of them
had travelled. They expected to meet every day; but did not know one
another's names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank
wine; but I had a cut of meat for six-pence, and bread for a penny, and
gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better
than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.' He at this time, I
believe, abstained entirely from fermented liquors: a practice to which
he rigidly conformed for many years together, at different periods of
his life.

His Ofellus in the Art of Living in London, I have heard him relate, was
an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practised his
own precepts of oeconomy for several years in the British capital. 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