and Lord Gower, to procure a degree from Dublin, that it might aid him
in his application for a school at Appleby, in Leicestershire. In
this, however, he failed, and had to persevere for many years more in
the ill-paid drudgery of authorship--meditating a translation of
"Father Paul's History," which was never executed--writing in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ lives of Böerhaave and Father Paul, &c., &c.,
&c.--and published separately "Marmor Norfolciense," a disguised
invective against Sir Robert Walpole, the obnoxious premier of the
day. About this time he became intimate with the notorious Richard
Savage, and with him spent too many of his private hours. Both were
poor, both proud, both patriotic, both at that time lovers of
pleasure, and they became for a season inseparable; often
perambulating the streets all night, engaged now, we fear, in low
revels, and now in high talk, and sometimes determined to stand by
their country when they could stand by nothing else. Yet, if Savage
for a season corrupted Johnson, he also communicated to him much
information, and at last left himself in legacy, as one of the best
subjects to one of the greatest masters of moral anatomy. In 1744,
Johnson rolled off from his powerful pen, with as much ease as a thick
oak a thunder-shower, the sounding sentences which compose the "Life
of Savage," and which shall for ever perpetuate the memory and the
tale of that "unlucky rascal." It is a wasp preserved in the richest
amber. The whole reads like one sentence, and is generally read at one
sitting. Sir Joshua Reynolds, meeting it in a country inn, began to
read it while standing with his arm leaning on a chimney-piece, and
was not able to lay it aside till he had finished it, when he found
his arm totally benumbed. In 1745, Johnson issued proposals for a new
edition of Shakspeare, but laid them aside for a time, owing to the
great expectations entertained of the edition then promised by
Warburton.