To trace in order of time the various changes in Johnson's place of
residence in the metropolis, if it were worth the trouble, would not be
possible. A list of them, which he gave to Boswell, amounting to
seventeen, but without the correspondent dates, is preserved by that
writer. For the sake of being near his printer, while the Dictionary was
on the anvil, he took a convenient house in Gough Square, near
Fleet-street, and fitted up one room in it as an office, where six
amanuenses were employed in transcribing for him, of whom Boswell
recounts in triumph that five were Scotchmen. In 1748, he wrote, for
Dodsley's Preceptor, the Preface, and the Vision of Theodore the Hermit,
to which Johnson has been heard to give the preference over all his other
writings. In the January of the ensuing year, appeared the Vanity of
Human Wishes, being the Tenth Satire of Juvenal imitated, which he sold
for fifteen guineas; and, in the next month, his Irene was brought on
the stage, not without a previous altercation between the poet and his
former pupil, concerning some changes which Garrick's superior knowledge
of the stage made him consider to be necessary, but which Johnson said
the fellow desired only that they might afford him more opportunity of
tossing his hands and kicking his heels. He always treated the art of a
player with illiberal contempt; but was at length, by the intervention
of Dr. Taylor, prevailed on to give way to the suggestions of Garrick.
Yet Garrick had not made him alter all that needed altering; for the
first exhibition of Irene shocked the spectators with the novel sight of
a heroine who was to utter two verses with the bow-string about her
neck. This horror was removed from a second representation; but, after
the usual course of ten nights, the tragedy was no longer in request.
Johnson thought it requisite, on this occasion, to depart from the usual
homeliness of his habit, and to appear behind the scenes, and in the
side boxes, with the decoration of a gold-laced hat and waistcoat. He