After the accession of George III in 1760, Johnson was among the first to be granted a government pension. In 1762 he received an annuity of ₤300 which eased the burden of his continual financial difficulties and allowed him to live a comfortable, leisurely life. Johnson was later famously to say that “[n]o man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money”, and after receiving his pension he was indeed as good as his word. In the next fifteen years he wrote very little and only occasionally. The only exception to this rule was his edition of Shakespeare which he published in 1765. This was a project that he had planned for more than twenty years but that he could not accomplish because of the copyright on Shakespeare’s texts. In 1765, however, the copyright expired and he could realize his long-cherished plan of editing Shakespeare. Although his intention was to create a “good text”, the real merit of his edition is not to be found in the text he produced but rather in the criticism he attached to it. In the famous Preface he created an image of Shakespeare as the pre-eminent poet of nature; an image that has had a lasting effect on the Shakespeare criticism of subsequent ages. Besides, in the notes he attached to the texts he also made sharp and insightful critical observations, which are of lasting value to our day.