e impecuniosity, the less
pleasant interpretation is not improbable. He would walk the streets all
night with his friend, Savage, when their combined funds could not pay
for a lodging. One night, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds in later years,
they thus perambulated St. James's Square, warming themselves by
declaiming against Walpole, and nobly resolved that they would stand by
their country.

Patriotic enthusiasm, however, as no one knew better than Johnson, is a
poor substitute for bed and supper. Johnson suffered acutely and made
some attempts to escape from his misery. To the end of his life, he was
grateful to those who had lent him a helping hand. "Harry Hervey," he
said of one of them shortly before his death, "was a vicious man, but
very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him." Pope was
impressed by the excellence of his first poem, _London_, and induced
Lord Gower to write to a friend to beg Swift to obtain a degree for
Johnson from the University of Dublin. The terms of this circuitous
application, curious, as bringing into connexion three of the most
eminent men of letters of the day, prove that the youngest of them was
at the time (1739) in deep distress. The object of the degree was to
qualify Johnson for a mastership of L60 a year, which would make him
happy for life. He would rather, said Lord Gower, die upon the road to
Dublin if an examination were necessary, "than be starved to death in
translating for booksellers, which has been his only subsistence for
some time past." The application failed, however, and the want of a
degree was equally fatal to another application to be admitted to
practise at Doctor's Commons.

Literature was thus perforce Johnson's sole support; and by literature
was meant, for the most part, drudgery of the kind indicated by the
phrase, "translating for booksellers." While still in Lichfield, Johnson
had, as I have said, written to Cave, proposing to become a contributor
to the _Gentleman's Magazine_. The letter was one of those which a
modern editor receives by the dozen, and answers as perfunctorily as his
conscience will allow. It seems, however, to have made some impression
upon Cave, and possibly led to Johnson's employment by him on his first
arrival in London. From 1738 he was employed both on the Magazine and in
some jobs of translation.

Edward Cave, to whom we are thus introduced, was a man of some mark in
the history of literature. Johnson always spo