his romances, Richardson would have known how to grace his hero; but in
fictitious scenes, generosity costs the writer nothing.

About this time Johnson contributed several papers to a periodical
miscellany, called The Visiter, from motives which are highly honourable
to him, a compassionate regard for the late Mr. Christopher Smart. The
criticism on Pope's epitaphs appeared in that work. In a short time
after, he became a reviewer in the Literary magazine, under the auspices
of the late Mr. Newbery, a man of a projecting head, good taste, and
great industry. This employment engrossed but little of Johnson's time.
He resigned himself to indolence, took no exercise, rose about two, and
then received the visits of his friends. Authors, long since forgotten,
waited on him, as their oracle, and he gave responses in the chair of
criticism. He listened to the complaints, the schemes, and the hopes and
fears of a crowd of inferior writers, "who," he said, in the words of
Roger Ascham, "lived _men knew not how, and died obscure, men marked not
when_." He believed, that he could give a better history of Grub street
than any man living. His house was filled with a succession of visitors
till four or five in the evening. During the whole time he presided at
his tea-table. Tea was his favourite beverage; and, when the late Jonas
Hanway pronounced his anathema against the use of tea, Johnson rose in
defence of his habitual practice, declaring himself "in that article, a
hardened sinner, who had for years diluted his meals with the infusion
of that fascinating plant; whose tea-kettle had no time to cool; who,
with tea, solaced the midnight hour, and with tea welcomed the morning."

The proposal for a new edition of Shakespeare, which had formerly
miscarried, was resumed in the year 1756. The booksellers readily agreed
to his terms: and subscription-tickets were issued out. For undertaking
this work, money, he confessed, was the inciting motive. His friends