Johnson's Life and Genius.
��action for two men who were to be the architects of their own fortune. In three or four years afterwards Garrick came forth with talents that astonished the publick. He began his career at Goodman's-fields z , and there, monstratus fatis Vespasianus" 2 ! he chose a lucrative profession, and consequently soon emerged from all his difficulties. Johnson was left to toil in the humble walks of literature. A tragedy, as appears by Walmsley's letter, was the whole of his stock. This, most probably, was IRENE 3 ; but, if then finished, it was doomed to wait for a more happy period. It was offered to Fleetwood, and rejected. Johnson looked round him for employment. Having, while he remained in the country, corresponded with Cave under a feigned name, he now thought it time to make himself known to a man whom he considered as a patron of literature 4 . Cave had announced, by public advertisement, a prize of fifty pounds for the best
��1 On Oct. 19, 1741. Murphy's Garrick, pp. 13, 16.
2 Tacitus, Agricola, c. 13. ' Des tiny learnt to know its favourite.' Church and Brodribb's Translation.
3 It was Irene. Life, i. 100.
Boswell recorded in his note book : ' Peter Garrick told me that Mr. Johnson went first to London, to see what could be made of his tragedy of Irene ; that he remembers his borrowing the Turkish History (I think Peter said of htm] in order to take the story of his play out of it ; that he and Mr. Johnson went to the Fountain Tavern by themselves, and Mr. Johnson read it to him. This, Mr. Peter Garrick told me at Lichfield, Sunday, 24 March, 1778. Mr. Porter, son to Mrs. Johnson, was by, and objected that the Fountain was a notorious bawdy-house. Peter said it might be so, but that people might be decently there, as well as anywhere else ; that he belonged to a West India club kept there, at which a dozen of Madeira used to be set before the fire to toast, and that
VOL. I. B
��they never had women with them.' Morrison Autographs, i. 369.
For the Fountain Tavern see Life, i. ill, and for the rejection of Irene by Fleetwood, the patentee of Drury Lane Theatre, see ib. i. m, 153, and Letters, i. 5.
In the advertisement at the end of Theatrical Records, 1756, are eight tragedies published by Dodsley, Irene among them each at eighteen- pence. On p. 103 is mentioned Irene or the Fair Greek, a Tragedy by Charles Goring, 1708.
Gilbert Swinhoe, in 1658, pub lished The Tragedy of the imhappy fair Irene. Lowndes's Biblio. Man. p. 2562.
4 Murphy in this is following Hawkins. Johnson had not written
- under a feigned name.' He had
said : ' Your letter by being directed to S. Smith, to be left at the Castle Inn, Birmingham will reach your humble servant.' Life, i. 92. His letter, to which Murphy now refers (Ib. i. 107), clearly shows that the first had had no result. b Poem
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