17 
By these and similar means Johnson contrived to make 
his way until 1762, when the necessity for a continuance of 
such exertions was suddenly and unexpectedly removed by 
the bestowal of a Crown pension of £300 a year. In the 
following year appeared Boswell of the observant eye and 
ready note-book, and it is from this era that the life of J ohnson 
as we know him may properly be said to commence. 
Boswell made two unfortunate remarks and by an emphatic 
rebuff was reduced to silence. With less pertinacity or more 
self-respect he might have gone no further, but abounding in 
the former quality and but little encumbered with the latter, 
he was able, as he puts it, to remain on the field not wholly 
discomfited. 
A few days later he boldly called at Johnson’s lodgings in 
the Temple where he was received with every courtesy that 
is independent of clothes. 
On one famous occasion — that of the production of his 
play — Johnson appeared in a scarlet waistcoat and a gold- 
laced hat. That display was but a meteoric splendour ; in 
general he was equally neglectful of his person and his apparel. 
His hands were seldom beyond reproach ; for clean linen he 
acknowledged he had no passion ; and to one who extolled 
the virtues of cold baths he declared that he hated immersion. 
Not less reprehensible was his manner of eating. He 
gorged his food and splashed soups and sauces over his own 
and his neighbours’ clothes, while his too obvious gratification 
found expression in a series of inarticulate grunts. 
His shortcomings in these matters were doubtless due in 
large measure to his having passed so great a portion of his 
life in a society where personal fastidiousness was little 
esteemed, and where a good meal was less an incident in the 
daily round than a luxury of irregular recurrence. 
An effect also of his hard schooling in adversity was his 
intolerance of complaints of petty grievances and fancy- 
swollen sorrows. In a world full of real want and hunger 
he had no patience with a lady who grumbled at dusty roads, 
or a Boswell that tortured himself with forebodings of 
indefinite evil. He had no feeling for the man who was 
hurt by being uncharitably talked of, and the valetudinarian 
he condemned as a “ scoundrel ” whose woes were a cloak 
for his self-indulgence. 
With occasional mitigation his hypochondria clung to 
him all his life. At times in a stupefaction of his senses he 
