A. pro been: His 5 yet la. he was 10 support of succeeded a His life, d one hard str struggle need hereditary mala He London into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endearments of this extraordinary pair. At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a literary adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, 5 three acts of the tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or three letters of introduction from his friend Walmesley. Never, since literature became a calling in England, had it been a less gainful calling than at the time 10 when Johnson took up his residence in London. In the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit. was sure to be munificently rewarded by the governnent. The least that he could expect was a pension ›r a sinecure place; and, if he showed any aptitude 15 or politics, he might hope to be a member of parliaent, a lord of the treasury, an ambassador, a Pcretary of state. It would be easy, on the other and, to name several writers of the nineteenth ntury of whom the least successful has received 20 orty thousand pounds from the booksellers. But ohnson entered on his vocation in the most dreary dary interval which separated two ages Literature had ceased to flourish unage of the great, and had not begun 25 for his religion partook of his own character. The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct line, or with its own pure splendour. The rays had to struggle through a disturbing medium: they 5 reached him refracted, dulled and discoloured by the thick gloom which had settled on his soul; and, though they might be sufficiently clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him." With such infirmities of body and of mind, this 10 celebrated man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He remained during about five years in the midland countries. At Lichfield, his birth-place and his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired others. He was 15 kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge of the world, did himself 20 honour by patronising the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished manners, and squalid garb, moved many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to laughter or to disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning 25 a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house of a country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he 5 printed a translation, little noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publishing by subscription the poems of Politian, with notes containing a history of modern Latin verse; but subscriptions did not 10 come in; and the volume never appeared. While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators, the lady appeared to 15 be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colours, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as he called her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accomplished of her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned can- 25 20 not be doubted; for she was as poor as himself. She accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the addresses of a suitor who might have been her son. The marriage, however, in spite of occasional 5 wranglings, proved happier than might have been expected. The lover continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day till the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed an inscription extolling the charms of her person 10 and of her manner; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion to mention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic, "Pretty creature!" His marriage made it necessary for him to exert 15 himself more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a house in the neighbourhood of his native town, and advertised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away; and only three pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his appearance was so strange, and 20 his temper so violent, that his schoolroom must have resembled an ogre's den. Nor was the tawdry painted grandmother whom he called his Titty well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young gentlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, 25 many years later, to throw the best company of |