SAMUEL JOHNSON.

SAMUEL JOHNSON was the son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller at Lichfield, and was born there on the seventh of September, 1709. He was the eldest of two sons; his brother Nathaniel succeeded his father in his business, and died in his twenty-fifth year, in 1737. Johnson inherited from his father that morbid melancholy which occasionally depressed him, and which his mighty mind could not always overcome. As a child he was afflicted with the king's evil; and his parents, who were stanch jacobites, presented him to Queen Anne for the royal touch; but, notwithstanding this potent remedy, an operation became necessary, the scars of which disfigured the lower part of his face; by this disease, his hearing and the sight of his left eye were impaired.

He received the rudiments of education at the free grammar school of his native town, and made rapid progress in his classical studies. Mr. Hunter, the master of the school, though an excellent teacher, was a strict disciplinarian, and Johnson smarted under his lash; but confessed in after life that it was not without reason. Restraint sat uneasy upon him, he could not conquer his aversion to stated tasks, but when he chose to apply himself he could do more than other boys in mu shorter time; and his ambition, which prompted him to be the captain of the school, overcame his constitutional indolence. He rarely

mingled in the common sports of the boys, but amused himself with sauntering in the fields, and at times talking aloud to himself.

When he was fifteen years old, he spent some months in a visit to his cousin, the eccentric Cornelius Ford, from whose advice and assistance he profited in the prosecution of his studies. On his return to Lichfield, the master of the school refused to receive him again on the foundation, and he was therefore placed in a school at Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, where he remained above a year, and then returned home.

Even in his youth, Johnson was a true helluo librorum ; his reading was multifarious and without system, but yet. very extraordinary for a boy; "I read" (says he)" all literature, all ancient writers;" and Dr. Percy has recorded his passion for romances at this time. When on a visit at his

reading the ponderous

parsonage he chose for his regular folio romance of Felixmarte d'Hercania, in Spanish, which he read quite through. He retained his partiality for this species of fiction in advanced years, and sometimes attributed to its influence that unsettled turn of mind which prevented his ever fixing in any profession.

He passed two years at home in this excursive kind of desultory reading, and made translations in verse from Homer, Virgil, and Horace. None of them are very remarkable for their excellence, even though the age at which they were performed be considered. In 1728, when he was about nineteen, he went to Oxford, and was entered commoner of Pembroke College. His father's circumstances would not have allowed him to think of a college education, had he not been selected by Mr. Corbet, a Shropshire gentleman, to accompany his son (who had been Johnson's school

fellow) to the university, in the character of companion, with a promise of supporting him there, but it appears that he never received any pecuniary assistance, and was left to struggle his way, as well as he could, in poverty; which must have vexed his proud and independent spirit. His tutor at college was Mr. Jorden, a worthy man, but not gifted with a mind or acquirements to fit him for a director of Johnson's studies; who, though he respected his kind-heartedness, held his scholarship in contempt. His studies were here as desultory as they had been at home: he read without method; but told Mr. Boswell that "what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and Euripides, and now and then an epigram; that the study of which he was the most fond was metaphysics, but he had not read much even in that way."

Dr. Percy relates "that he was generally seen lounging at the college-gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the college discipline, which, in his maturer years, he so much extolled." Yet he found time to lay up a store of varied and useful knowledge during his three years' stay at the university, and acquired a high reputation for the har mony of his Latin verse. Mathematics and physics had no attractions for him. Philosophy, ethics, and theology, engaged much of his attention; he himself has related that "Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life," which he had taken up at this time with great prejudice against it, first made him think seriously of religion; and from this period piety was one of his most distinguishing characteristics, though he seems never to have attained the tranquillity and assurance, in his practice of the Christian duties, which are so

earnestly to be desired. The terrors and not the healing influence of his creed predominated.

In 1730, Mr. Corbet left the university, and his father declining to contribute to Johnson's support, he was left in the most straitened circumstances. He struggled through another year, and had some intention of applying himself to either the civil or common law; but his debts and difficulties increased, his pittance from Lichfield could no longer be remitted, his father became insolvent, and he was compelled to leave his college in the autumn of 1731, not having taken a degree.

He returned to Lichfield without any plan of life for his future support; but his own merits and the respectable character of his parents gained him access to the best society of his native town. Soon after this his father' died; and, when he had made a slender provision for his mother, Johnson's share of his effects was not more than 201. Under these circumstances it became necessary for him to adopt some plan for immediate subsistence; he therefore accepted the employment of under-master of the school of Market Bosworth, in Leicestershire, and went thither on foot in July, 1732. The pride and insolence of Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school, in whose house Johnson resided as a kind of domestic chaplain, rendered his situation so irksome that he relinquished it in a few months, and never remembered it but with a degree of horror.

Again thrown upon the world without means of support, he accepted an invitation from his school-fellow, Mr. Hector, to pass some time with him at Birmingham, at the house of Mr. Warren, a bookseller, with whom he lodged.

After residing six months with his friend Hector, wishing

still to enjoy his society, he took lodgings in the house of Mr. Jarvis, in another part of the town; and at his desire he translated "Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia," from the French. For this work he received only the small sum of five guineas. It is remarkable as the first prose work of Johnson; the translation is not marked by the characteristics of his style, but the preface and dedication give indications of that structure of sentence and mode of expression which he afterwards adopted.

While at Birmingham he addressed a letter to Mr. Cave, the proprietor of the "Gentleman's Magazine," under the fictitious name of Smith, offering to supply him with " poems, inscriptions, and short literary dissertations in Latin or English, critical remarks on authors ancient or modern," &c. Mr. Cave returned him an answer, gladly accepting his proffered assistance.

During his residence in this town he became intimate with the family of a mercer named Porter, whose widow he subsequently married (1736). Mrs. Porter was more than twenty years older than himself, but he was fondly attached to her, and she added to other powers of increasing his happiness the possession of 8007. With this capital he established a school, but his advertisements produced few scholars, the scheme failed, and he left Staffordshire, with his pupil Garrick, to seek his fortune in the metropolis. His prospects must have been very gloomy: he had nothing but literature to trust to for subsistence, and those were times when the condition of literary men was most miserable and degraded. In the reigns of William, of Anne, and George I., successful writers were rewarded by private munificence and public situations. Eut such patronage was now at an end; and the year in which Johnson left his home formed part of an interval which