(Works, viii. 125). Savage, he says, was received into Lord Tyrconnel’s family and allowed a pension of £200 a year. ‘His presence,’ Johnson writes, ‘was sufficient to make any place of publick entertainment popular; and his approbation and example constituted the fashion. So powerful is genius when it is invested with the glitter of affluence!’ In the last summer of his life, speaking of the chance of his pension being doubled, he said that with six hundred a year ‘a man would have the consciousness that he should pass the remainder of his life in splendour, how long soever it might be.’ Post, June 30, 1784. David Hume writing in 1751, says:—‘I have £50 a year, a £100 worth of books, great store of linens and fine clothes, and near £100 in my pocket; along with order, frugality, a strong spirit of independency, good health, a contented humour, and an unabating love of study. In these circumstances I must esteem myself one of the happy and fortunate.’ J. H. Burton’s Hume, i. 342. Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning (chap, vii), makes the following observation on pensions granted in France to authors:—‘The French nobility have certainly a most pleasing way of satisfying the vanity of an author without indulging his avarice. A man of literary merit is sure of being caressed by the great, though seldom enriched. His pension from the crown just supplies half a competence, and the sale of his labours makes some small addition to his circumstances; thus the author leads a life of splendid poverty, and seldom becomes wealthy or indolent enough to discontinue an exertion of those abilities by which he rose.’ Whether Johnson’s pension led to his writing less than he would otherwise have done may be questioned. It is true that in the next seventeen years he did little more than finish his edition of Shakespeare, and write his Journey to the Western Islands and two or three political pamphlets. But since he wrote the last number of The Idler in the spring of 1760 he had done very little. His mind, which, to use Murphy’s words (Life, p. 80), had been ‘strained and overlaboured by constant exertion,’ had not recovered its tone. It is likely, that without the pension he would not have lived to write the second greatest of his works—the Lives of the Poets.
[1106] Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, i. 281) says:—‘Bute’s pensions to his Scottish crew showing meaner than ever in Churchill’s daring verse, it occurred to the shrewd and wary Wedderburne to advise, for a set off, that Samuel Johnson should be pensioned.’ The Prophecy of Famine in which Churchill’s attack was made on the pensioned Scots was published in Jan. 1763, nearly half a year after Johnson’s pension was conferred.
[1107] For his Falkland’s Islands ‘materials were furnished to him by the ministry’ (post, 1771). ‘The Patriot was called for,’ he writes, ‘by my political friends’ (post, Nov. 26, 1774). ‘That Taxation no Tyranny was written at the desire of those who were then in power, I have no doubt,’ writes Boswell (post, under March 21, 1775). ‘Johnson complained to a friend that, his pension having been given to him as a literary character, he had been applied to by administration to write political pamphlets’ (Ib.). Are these statements inconsistent with what Lord Loughborough said, and with Boswell’s assertion (Ib.) that ‘Johnson neither asked nor received from government any reward whatsoever for his political labours?’ I think not. I think that, had Johnson unpensioned been asked by the Ministry to write these pamphlets, he would have written them. He would have been pleased by the compliment, and for pay would have trusted to the sale. Speaking of the first two of these pamphlets—the third had not yet appeared—he said, ‘Except what I had from the booksellers, I did not get a farthing by them’ (post, March 21, 1772). They had not cost him much labour. The False Alarm was written between eight o’clock of one night and twelve o’clock of the next. It went through three editions in less than two months (post, 1770). The Patriot was written on a Saturday (post, Nov. 26, 1774). At all events Johnson had received his pension for more than seven years before he did any work for the ministry. In Croft’s Life of Young, which Johnson adopted (Works, viii. 422), the following passage was perhaps intended to be a defence of Johnson as a writer for the Ministry:—‘Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner? In all modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been regularly called hirelings, and on the other patriots?’
[1108] See ante, p. 294.
[1109] Murphy’s account is nearly as follows (Life, p. 92):—‘Lord Loughborough was well acquainted with Johnson; but having heard much of his independent spirit, and of the downfall of Osborne the bookseller (ante, p. 154), he did not know but his benevolence might be rewarded with a folio on his head. He desired me to undertake the task. I went to the chambers in the Inner Temple Lane, which, in fact, were the abode of wretchedness. By slow and studied approaches the message was disclosed. Johnson made a long pause; he asked if it was seriously intended. He fell into a profound meditation, and his own definition of a pensioner occurred to him. He desired to meet next day, and dine at the Mitre Tavern. At that meeting he gave up all his scruples. On the following day Lord Loughborough conducted him to the Earl of Bute. The conversation that passed was in the evening related to me by Dr. Johnson. He expressed his sense of his Majesty’s bounty, and thought himself the more highly honoured, as the favour was not bestowed on him for having dipped his pen in faction. “No, Sir,” said Lord Bute, “it is not offered to you for having dipped your pen in faction, nor with a design that you ever should.”’ The reviewer of Hawkins’s Johnson in the Monthly Review, lxxvi. 375, who was, no doubt, Murphy, adds a little circumstance:—‘On the next day Mr. Murphy was in the Temple Lane soon after nine; he got Johnson up and dressed in due time; and saw him set off at eleven.’ Malone’s note on what Lord Bute said to Johnson is as follows:—‘This was said by Lord Bute, as Dr. Burney was informed by Johnson himself, in answer to a question which he put, previously to his acceptance of the intended bounty: “Pray, my Lord, what am I expected to do for this pension?”’
[1110]
‘In Britain’s senate he a seat obtains
And one more pensioner St. Stephen gains.’
Moral Essays, iii. 392.
Johnson left the definition of pension and pensioner unchanged in the fourth edition of the Dictionary, corrected by him in 1773.
[1111] He died on March 10, 1792. This paragraph and the letter are not in the first two editions.
[1112] The Treasury, Home Office, Exchequer of Receipt and Audit Office Records have been searched for a warrant granting a pension to Dr. Johnson without success. In 1782, by Act of Parliament all pensions on the Civil List Establishment were from that time to be paid at the Exchequer. In the Exchequer Order Book, Michaelmas 1782, No. 46, p. 74, the following memorandum occurs:—“Memdum. 3 Dec. 1782. There was issued to the following persons (By order 6th of Nov. 1782) the sums set against their names respectively, etc.:—Persons names: Johnson Saml, LL.D. Pensions p. ann. £300. Due to 5 July 1782, two quarters, £150.”
This pension was paid at the Exchequer from that time to the quarter ending 10 Oct. 1784. ‘It is clear that the pension was payable quarterly [for confirmation of this, see post, Nov. 3, 1762, and July 16, 1765] and at the old quarter days, July 5, Oct. 10, Jan. 5, April 5, though payment was sometimes delayed. [Once he was paid half-yearly; see post, under March 20, 1771.] The expression “bills” was a general term at the time for notes, cheques, and warrants, and no doubt covered some kind of Treasury warrant.’ The above information I owe to the kindness of my friend Mr. Leonard H. Courtney, M.P., late Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The ‘future favours’ are the future payments. His pension was not for life, and depended therefore entirely on the king’s pleasure (see post, under March 21, 1775). The following letter in the Grenville Papers, ii. 68, seems to show that Johnson thought the pension due on the new quarter-day:—
‘DR. JOHNSON To MR. GRENVILLE.
‘July 2, 1763.
‘SIR,
‘Be pleased to pay to the bearer seventy-five pounds, being the quarterly payment of a pension granted by his Majesty, and due on the 24th day of