’He, and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. Samuel Johnson, set out this morning for London together.  Davy Garrick is to be with you early the next week, and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed in some translation, either from the Latin or the French.  Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy-writer.  If it should any way lie in your way, doubt not but you would be ready to recommend and assist your countryman.

‘G.  Walmsley.’

How he employed himself upon his first coming to London is not particularly known.’

* One curious anecdote was communicated by himself to Mr. John Nichols.  Mr. Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an authour, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a significant look, said, ’You had better buy a porter’s knot.’  He however added, ’Wilcox was one of my best friends.’—­Boswell.

He had a little money when he came to town, and he knew how he could live in the cheapest manner.  His first lodgings were at the house of Mr. Norris, a staymaker, in Exeter-street, adjoining Catharine-street, in the Strand.  ’I dined (said he) very well for eight-pence, with very good company, at the Pine Apple in New-street, just by.  Several of them had travelled.  They expected to meet every day; but did not know one another’s names.  It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for six-pence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.’  He at this time, I believe, abstained entirely from fermented liquors:  a practice to which he rigidly conformed for many years together, at different periods of his life.

His Ofellus in the Art of Living in London, I have heard him relate, was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practised his own precepts of oeconomy for several years in the British capital.  He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was then meditating to try his fortune in London, but was apprehensive of the expence, ’that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible.  He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen.  He said a man might live in a garret at eighteen-pence a week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, “Sir, I am to be found at such a place.”  By spending three-pence in a coffeehouse, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for six-pence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper.  On clean-shirt-day he went abroad, and paid visits.’  I have heard him more than once talk of this frugal friend, whom he recollected with esteem and kindness, and did not like to have one smile at the recital.  ’This man (said he, gravely) was a very sensible