I have heard him say, that he composed seventy lines of it in
one day, without putting one of them upon paper till they were finished.
I remember when I once regretted to him that he had not given us more of
Juvenal's Satires, he said he probably should give more, for he had them
all in his head; by which I understood that he had the originals and
correspondent allusions floating in his mind, which he could, when he
pleased, embody and render permanent without much labour. Some of them,
however, he observed were too gross for imitation.
The profits of a single poem, however excellent, appear to have been
very small in the last reign, compared with what a publication of
the same size has since been known to yield. I have mentioned, upon
Johnson's own authority, that for his London he had only ten guineas;
and now, after his fame was established, he got for his Vanity of Human
Wishes but five guineas more, as is proved by an authentick document in
my possession.
His Vanity of Human Wishes has less of common life, but more of a
philosophick dignity than his London.
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