sixpences to get the poet's clothes out of pawn. Two days afterwards,
Boyse had spent the money and was found in bed, covered only with a
blanket, through two holes in which he passed his arms to write. Boyse,
it appears, when still in this position would lay out his last
half-guinea to buy truffles and mushrooms for his last scrap of beef. Of
another scribbler Johnson said, "I honour Derrick for his strength of
mind. One night when Floyd (another poor author) was wandering about
the streets at night, he found Derrick fast asleep upon a bulk. Upon
being suddenly awaked, Derrick started up; 'My dear Floyd, I am sorry to
see you in this destitute state; will you go home with me to my
_lodgings_?'" Authors in such circumstances might be forced into such a
wonderful contract as that which is reported to have been drawn up by
one Gardner with Rolt and Christopher Smart. They were to write a
monthly miscellany, sold at sixpence, and to have a third of the
profits; but they were to write nothing else, and the contract was to
last for ninety-nine years. Johnson himself summed up the trade upon
earth by the lines in which Virgil describes the entrance to hell; thus
translated by Dryden:--

Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful cares and sullen sorrows dwell.
And pale diseases and repining age,
Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage:
Here toils and Death and Death's half-brother, Sleep--
Forms, terrible to view, their sentry keep.

"Now," said Johnson, "almost all these apply exactly to an author; these
are the concomitants of a printing-house."

Judicious authors, indeed, were learning how to make literature pay.