After several years of youth passed in the country as usher, teacher, and
an occasional writer for the press, Johnson, when twenty-eight years of
age, came up to London with a half-written tragedy in his pocket; and David
Garrick, late his pupil, and several years his junior, as a companion, both
poor and penniless, both, like Goldsmith, seeking their fortune in the
metropolis. "We rode and tied," said Garrick sportively in after years of
prosperity, when he spoke of their humble wayfaring. "I came to London,"
said Johnson, "with twopence halfpenny in my pocket." "Eh, what's that you
say?" cried Garrick, "with twopence halfpenny in your pocket?" "Why, yes; I
came with twopence halfpenny in _my_ pocket, and thou, Davy, with but
three halfpence in thine." Nor was there much exaggeration in the picture;
for so poor were they in purse and credit that after their arrival they
had, with difficulty, raised five pounds, by giving their joint note to a
bookseller in the Strand.
Many, many years had Johnson gone on obscurely in London, "fighting his way
by his literature and his wit"; enduring all the hardships and miseries of
a Grub Street writer; so destitute at one time that he and Savage the poet
had walked all night about St.
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