by the writers of his life, a similar enthusiasm may be pardoned in the biographer of Johnson.
His tragedy being by this time, as he thought, completely finished and fit for the stage, he was very desirous that it should be brought forward. Mr. Peter Garrick told me, that Johnson and he went together to the Fountain tavern, and read it over, and that he afterwards solicited Mr. Fleetwood, the patentee of Drury-lane theatre, to have it acted at his house; but Mr. Fleetwood would not accept it, probably because it was not patronized by some man of high rank[1]; and it was not acted till 1749, when his friend David Garrick was manager of that theatre.
The Gentleman's Magazine, begun and carried on by Mr. Edward Cave, under the name of Sylvanus Urban [2], had attracted the notice and esteem of Johnson, in an eminent degree, before he came to London as an adventurer in literature. He told me, that when he first saw St. John's Gate, the place where that deservedly popular miscellany[3] was originally printed, he 'beheld it with reverence[4].' I suppose,
- ↑ He could scarcely have solicited a worse manager. Horace Walpole writing in 1744 (Letters, i. 332) says: 'The town has been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage very boisterously. Fleetwood, the master of Drury-Lane, has omitted nothing to support them as they supported his house. About ten days ago, he let into the pit great numbers of Bear-garden bruisers(that is the term) to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out.'
- ↑ It was not till volume v. that Cave's name was given on the title-page. In volumes viii. and ix., and volumes xii. to xvii. the name is Edward Cave, Jun. Cave in his examination before the House of Lords on April 30, 1747, said:—'That he was concerned in the Gentleman's Magazine at first with his nephew: and since the death of his nephew he has done it entirely himself.' Parl. Hist. xiv. 59.
- ↑ Its sale, according to Johnson, was ten thousand copies. Post, April 25, 1778. So popular was it that before it had completed its ninth year the fifth edition of some of the earliest numbers was printed. Johnson's Works, v. 349. In the Life of Cave Johnson describes it as 'a periodical pamphlet, of which the scheme is known wherever the English language is spoken.' Ib. vi. 431.
- ↑ Yet the early numbers contained verses as grossly indecent as
