The Dictionary was Johnson's biggest literary adventure, but it was not the only one which occupied him in the years between 1747 and 1755. Even the great Lexicographer would have found it hard to do nothing but "beat the track of the alphabet" for eight years; for, as Boswell puts it, "his enlarged and lively mind could not be satisfied without more diversity of employment and the pleasure of animated relaxation."

There was another reason, too, which made it necessary for Johnson to write something besides definitions. 1500 guineas was not much on which to keep six assistants and himself for eight years. "When the expence of amanuenses and paper, and other articles are deducted, his clear profit was very inconsiderable." But Johnson, being a true adventurer, did not grumble. When Boswell said to him "I am sorry, Sir, you did not get more for your Dictionary," his answer was "I am sorry too. But it was very well. The booksellers are generous, liberal-minded men."

So, in 1749, Johnson offered to one of these booksellers, Mr James Dodsley, a poem called The Vanity of Human Wishes and received the sum of fifteen guineas.

It was written in imitation, as London had been, of the Roman poet Juvenal. The subject is a gloomy one and Garrick thought it "as hard as Greek." But parts of the poem are still familiar to everyone—the opening lines, for instance:

Various ambitious careers are described, such as those of Wolsey and Charles XII of Sweden; and a bitter warning is given to the literary adventurer, "the young enthusiast" who "quits his ease for fame."

David Garrick was by this time a famous actor. He was manager of Drury Lane theatre, and, after a good deal of dispute, it was arranged that Johnson's tragedy Irene, written some years before, should be put upon the stage. It was a play dealing with an Oriental court and Garrick was rehearsing the part of Mahomet.

"'Sir' said Johnson to a friend, 'the fellow wants me to make Mahomet run mad, that he may have an opportunity of tossing his hands and kicking his heels.'"

Here is an account of the first night:

"Before the curtain drew up, there were catcalls whistling, which alarmed Johnson's friends. The Prologue, which was written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably, till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be strangled upon the stage, and was to speak two lines with the bow-string round her neck. The audience cried out 'Murder! Murder!' She several times attempted to speak; but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off the stage alive."

This was Johnson's one adventure as a writer of plays and he no doubt enjoyed it. Everyone loves to go "behind the scenes."

"His necessary attendance while his play was in rehearsal, and during its performance, brought him acquainted with many of the performers of both sexes.... With some of them he kept up an acquaintance as long as he and they lived, and was ever ready to shew them acts of kindness. He for a considerable time used to frequent the Green Room, and seemed to take delight in dissipating his gloom, by mixing in the sprightly chit-chat of the motley circle then to be found there."

He felt, too, that his own dress should be in keeping with the gay clothes of those around him:

"On occasion of his play being brought upon the stage, Johnson had a fancy that as a dramatick authour his dress should be more gay than what he ordinarily wore; he therefore appeared behind the scenes, and even in one of the side boxes, in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat."

But Irene was not a success.

"Notwithstanding all the support of such performers as Garrick, Barry, Mrs Cibber, Mrs Pritchard, and every advantage of dress and decoration, the tragedy of Irene did not please the publick." However "Mr Garrick's zeal carried it through for nine nights, so that the authour had his three nights' profits."

These, together with the hundred pounds which Johnson received from Mr Dodsley for the copyright, made it, at any rate, a profitable adventure and "when asked how he felt upon the ill success of his tragedy, he replied, 'Like the Monument'; meaning that he continued firm and unmoved as that column."

In the following year, 1750, he set out upon another adventure. It was nearly forty years since the last numbers of The Tatler and The Spectator, written by the famous essayists of Queen Anne's reign—Joseph Addison and Richard Steele—had appeared.

Johnson now embarked upon a similar periodical paper in which, as Boswell says, "he came forth as a majestick teacher of moral and religious wisdom."

The choice of a title gave him some trouble: "What must be done, Sir," he afterwards told Sir Joshua Reynolds "will be done. When I was to begin publishing that paper, I was at a loss how to name it. I sat down at night upon my bedside, and resolved that I would not go to sleep till I had fixed its title. The Rambler seemed the best that occurred, and I took it."

"The first paper of the Rambler" Boswell tells us "was published on Tuesday the 20th of March 1750; and its authour was enabled to continue it, without interruption, every Tuesday and Friday, till Saturday[6] the 17th of March, 1752, on which day it closed.... Many of these discourses, which we should suppose had been laboured with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were written in haste as the moment pressed, without even being read over by him before they were printed."

Like Irene, The Rambler did not really "please the publick." The matter was too solid for a two-penny paper, and less than 500 copies of each number were sold. Boswell speaks sadly of this lack of success:

"The grave and often solemn cast of thinking, which distinguished it from other periodical papers, made it, for some time, not generally liked. So slowly did this excellent work, of which twelve editions have now issued from the press, gain upon the world at large, that even in the closing number the authour says, 'I have never been much a favourite with the publick.'"

But from one source, at any rate, Johnson got honest praise:

"Mrs Johnson, in whose judgement and taste he had great confidence, said to him, after a few numbers of the Rambler had come out 'I thought very well of you before; but I did not imagine you could have written anything equal to this.'"

"Distant praise, from whatever quarter," adds Boswell "is not so delightful as that of a wife whom a man loves and esteems."

Johnson was now emerging from the period of "cold obscurity." He had begun to gather a circle of friends round him and had founded the first of his clubs "in Ivy-lane, Paternoster-row, with a view to enjoy literary discussion, and amuse his evening hours." His character, though not his income, in the literary world was "deservedly high" and one honour which came to him in 1754 was especially pleasing to him—the conferment of the degree of Master of Arts by the University of Oxford. We can see how much he looked forward to this by a phrase in one of his letters at the time: "I shall be extremely glad to hear from you again, to know if the affair [of the degree] proceeds. I have mentioned it to none of my friends for fear of being laughed at for my disappointment."

"In 1755 we behold him" says Boswell "to great advantage; his degree of Master of Arts conferred upon him, his Dictionary published, his correspondence animated, his benevolence exercised." But in the following year "Johnson found that the great fame of his Dictionary had not set him above the necessity of 'making provision for the day that was passing over him.' No royal or noble patron extended a munificent hand to give independence to the man who had conferred stability on the language of his country."

In other words, he must still write for a living. "Ten guineas" he afterwards said "was to me at that time a great sum" and he did not disdain to accept a guinea from Mr Robert Dodsley, "for writing the introduction to The London Chronicle, an evening news-paper."

He tried his hand, too, at another series of essays which, under the name of The Idler, came out every Saturday in a weekly newspaper. Boswell says that these essays have "less body and more spirit" than The Rambler and refers to one "in which conversation is assimilated to a bowl of punch." Many of them were written "as hastily as an ordinary letter."

"Mr Langton remembers Johnson, when on a visit at Oxford, asking him one evening how long it was till the post went out; and on being told about half an hour, he exclaimed, 'then we shall do very well.' He upon this instantly sat down and finished an Idler, which it was necessary should be in London the next day. Mr Langton having signified a wish to read it, 'Sir, (said he) you shall not do more than I have done myself.' He then folded it up and sent it off."

Johnson, at the age of 49, was still writing in the spirit of the journalist.

A more ambitious work was Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, a tale of the East. This became very popular and was "translated into most, if not all, of the modern languages." It was written in the same hurried way as The Rambler and The Idler:

"Johnson wrote it, that with the profits he might defray the expence of his mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he had composed it in the evenings of one week, sent it to the press in portions as it was written, and had never since read it over[7]. Mr Strahan, Mr Johnston, and Mr Dodsley purchased it for a hundred pounds, but afterwards paid him twenty-five pounds more, when it came to a second edition."

Besides these works and an edition of Shakespeare which employed him for many years, Johnson wrote a number of essays, reviews of books, prefaces and dedications. From one of these, a defence of tea-drinking, we must quote a sentence later, for Boswell gives it as his opinion that "his chief Intention seems to have been to make Sport."

And now Johnson's career as "an adventurer in literature" is nearly at an end. What is, in some ways, the most important event of his life is thus described by Boswell:

"The accession of George the Third to the throne of these kingdoms, opened a new and brighter prospect to men of literary merit, who had been honoured with no mark of royal favour in the preceding reign. His present Majesty's education in this country, as well as his taste and beneficence, prompted him to be patron of science and the arts; and early this year Johnson, having been represented to him as a very learned and good man, without any certain provision, his Majesty was pleased to grant him a pension of three hundred pounds a year."

Johnson, being an honest man, had some qualms. In the two previous reigns he had been bitterly opposed to the government and had not hesitated to say so. Moreover, he had defined Pension in his Dictionary as "pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country[8]"! Could he honestly take the money? He went off at once to consult Sir Joshua Reynolds:

"Sir Joshua answered that ... there could be no objection to his receiving from the King a reward for literary merit; and that certainly the definitions in his Dictionary were not applicable to him. Johnson, it should seem, was satisfied, for he did not call again till he had accepted the pension, and had waited on Lord Bute [9] to thank him. He then told Sir Joshua that Lord Bute said to him expressly, 'It is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done.' His Lordship, he said, behaved in the handsomest manner. He repeated the words twice, that he might be sure Johnson heard them, and thus set his mind perfectly at ease."

No one was ever more fervently grateful than Johnson, who at the age of 53, had never known a day's good health or a year's steady income. He, who had compiled the Dictionary, declared:

"The English language does not afford me terms adequate to my feelings on this occasion. I must have recourse to the French. I am pÉnÉtrÉ with his Majesty's goodness."

Twenty years later his gratitude was still fresh:

"Sir, I have never complained of the world; nor do I think that I have reason to complain. It is rather to be wondered at that I have so much. My pension is more out of the usual course of things than any instance that I have known. Here, Sir, was a man avowedly no friend to Government at the time, who got a pension without asking for it."

A few years after the publication of the Dictionary Tobias Smollett, the novelist, had referred to Johnson as "the great Cham of literature." The title was adapted from that of the fierce chiefs of the Tartars, and it suits Johnson well enough. He held the foremost place in the literary society of his day and in taverns and great men's halls alike could proclaim his opinions on literature and art, history and politics, morality and religion to men who, though "eminent in their departments," regarded it as an honour to be allowed to listen to him.

Lord Chesterfield, half in jest and half in earnest, had conferred on him the powers of a literary "dictator." The king's pension enabled Johnson to use his powers in a way of which Chesterfield had not dreamed.

Henceforward we know him not as a poet or essayist or even as "the great Lexicographer," but simply as "Doctor Johnson[10]," the talker, the traveller, the true-born Englishman.

With the exception of some political pamphlets, an account of his Scottish tour, and a series of Lives of the Poets, he wrote little of importance after 1762, comparing himself to a soldier who has fought a good many campaigns and is not to be blamed for retiring to ease and tranquillity.

Boswell. 'But I wonder, Sir, you have not more pleasure in writing than in not writing.'

Johnson. 'Sir, you may wonder.'