A much more important matter than this hack-work was the publication of his _London_, a poem in imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal. This appeared in May 1738. He got ten guineas for it, which he was in no position to despise; but he also got something { 96} much more important, an established name in the world of letters. Every one talked of him, and Pope, who published his "1738" in the same year, was not only generous enough to inquire about him, and to say when told that the author of _London_ was some obscure man, "He will soon be _déterré_," but also to try to get him an Irish degree of M.A. This was in view of some attempts Johnson made to escape from dependence on journalism for his daily bread: but they were all unsuccessful, and till he received his pension his only source of income was what his various writings produced. In such circumstances he naturally wrote many things of quite ephemeral interest which call for no mention now. Perhaps the only prose work of permanent value he produced in these years was the life of his mysterious friend, Richard Savage. This curious volume appeared in 1744. The subject of it died in 1743. He and Johnson had been companions both in extreme poverty and in the intellectual pleasures which in such men poverty is unable to annihilate. Mrs. Johnson seems to have been out of London at this time, and the two struggling men of letters often passed nights together, walking and talking in the streets and squares without the price of a night's lodging between them. Johnson's account of { 97} his friend did not fill his pocket, but must have contributed something to his fame as it was very favourably criticized. It was the occasion of Reynolds first becoming acquainted with his name. He was so interested by the book that, having taken it up while standing with his arm leaning upon a chimney-piece, he read the whole without sitting down and found his arm quite benumbed when he got to the end.
"Slow rises worth by poverty depressed." Johnson had now been seven years in London, but had not yet found the way to do anything worthy of his powers. If he had died then, only the curious and the learned would have known his name to-day. A single satire in verse would never, by itself, have had the force to push its way through the ever-increasing crowd of applicants that besiege the attention of posterity. But the next year, 1745, is the literary turning-point of his life. Before it was over he had begun to deal with two subjects with which much of his remaining life was occupied, and on which much of his fame depends. He had published a pamphlet upon Shakespeare's _Macbeth_ which won the praise of Warburton, for which Johnson always felt and showed his gratitude ("He praised me at a time when praise was of value to me"); and, if Boswell is right, he had begun to occupy { 98} himself with the idea of making an English Dictionary. Thus, poor and obscure as he was in those years, sick with deferred hope as he must have been, he had in fact laid the foundation-stones of the authority and fame he was soon to enjoy as the Editor of Shakespeare and above all as "Dictionary Johnson." Now at last he began to do work worthier of his powers. The "_Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language_" was published in 1747 and in the same year he wrote the admirable _Prologue_ for the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, of which his pupil, David Garrick, more fortunate than the master with whom he had come to London, was now become manager.