But political prejudices were not the only bad things which young Sam inherited from his father: he derived from the same source a morbid melancholy, which, though it neither depressed his imagination, nor clouded his perspicuity, filled him with dreadful apprehensions of insanity, and rendered him wretched through life. From his nurse he contracted the scrofula, or king's evil, which made its appearance at a very early period, disfigured a face naturally well-formed, and deprived him of the sight of one of his eyes.

Johnson was initiated in classical learning at the free-school of his native city, under the tuition of Mr. Hunter, and having afterwards resided some time at the house of his cousin Cornelius Ford, a minister, who assisted him in the classics, he was, by his advice, at the age of fifteen, removed to the school of Stourbridge in Worcestershire, of which Mr. Wentworth was then master, whom he has described as "a very able man, but an idle man, and to him, unreasonably severe.”

On the 31st of October, 1728, he was entered a commoner of Pembroke College, Oxford, being then in his nineteenth year. Of his tutor, Mr. Jourden, "He was a very he gave the following account. worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instruction; indeed I did not attend him much." He had, however, a love and respect for Jourden, not for his literature, but for his worth. "Whenever," said he, "a young man becomes Jourden's puril, he becomes his son."

In the year 1730, Mr. Corbet, a young gentleman whom Johnson had accompanied to Oxford as a companion, left the university, and his father, to whom, according to the account of Sir John Hawkins, Johnson trusted for support, declined contributing any farther to that purpose; and as his father's business was by no means lucrative, his remittances were consequently too small to supply even the decencies of external appearance. Thus unfortunately situated, he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a degree, having been a member of it little more than three years. This was a circumstance which, in the subsequent part of his life, he had occasion to regret, as an obstacle to his obtaining a settlement, whence he might have derived that subsistence which he could not procure by any other

means.

In December 1731, his father died, in the seventyninth year of his age, in very narrow circumstances, so that for present support, he condescended to accept the employment of usher, in the free grammarschool at Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, which he relinquished in a short time, and went to reside at Birmingham, with his school-fellow Mr. Hector, where he derived considerable benefit from several of his literary productions. In this place he translated Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, and only received £5:5 for it.

In 1735 he became the warm admirer of Mrs. Porter, widow of Mr. Henry Porter, mercer in Bir mingham. "It was," he said, "a love match or

both sides," and judging from a description of their persons, we must suppose that the passion was not inspired by the beauties of form or graces of manner; but by a mutual admiration of each other's minds. Johnson's appearance is described as very forbidding. "He was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he had seemingly convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended at once to excite surprise and ridicule." Mrs. Porter was double the age of Johnson, and her person and manners, as described by Garrick, were by no means pleasing to others. It was beyond a doubt, however, that whatever her real charms might have been, in the eye of her husband she was extremely beautiful, for in her epitaph he has recorded⚫ her as such, and given many instances in his writ ings of a sincere and permanent affection.

With the property he acquired with his wife, which is supposed to have amounted to about £800, he attempted to establish a boarding school for young gentlemen at Edial, near Litchfield; but the plan proved abortive, the only pupils put under his care were Garrick, the celebrated English Roscius, his brother George, and a Mr. Offeley, a young gentleman of good fortune, who died early.* Disappointed in his expectation of deriving a subsistence from the

* About this time he was assiduously engaged in his tragedy called Irene.”

establishment of a boarding school, he set out on the 2d of March, 1737, being then in the 28th year of his age, for London; and it is a memorable circumstance, that his pupil Garrick went there at the same time, with an intention to complete his education, and follow the profession of the law. They were recommended to Mr. Colson, master of the mathematical school at Rochester, by a letter from a friend.

In three months after he came to London, his tragedy of Irene' being as he thought completely finished and fit for the stage, he solicited Mr. Fleetwood, the manager of Drury-lane Theatre, to bring it out at his house; but Mr. Fleetwood declined receiving it. Soon after he was employed by Mr. Cave, as a coadjutor in his magazine, which for some years was his principal resource for support.

In May 1738, he published London, a Poem,' written in imitation of the third satire of Juvenal. It has been generally said that he offered it to several booksellers, none of whom would purchase it. Mr. Cave at length communicated it to Dodsley, who had judgment enough to discern its intrinsic merit, and thought it creditable to be concerned in it. Dodsley gave him ten pounds for the copy. It is remarkable that it came out on the same morning with Pope's Satire, entitled, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty-eight.' Pope was so struck with its merit, that he sought to discover the author, and prophesied his future fame, and from his note to Lord Gower, it seems that he was successful in his inquiries.

He derived, however, so little emolument from his literary productions, that notwithstanding the success of his London,' he was willing to accept of an offer made him of becoming master of a freeschool, at a salary of sixty pounds a year; but as the statutes of the school required that he should be a Master of Arts, he was under the necessity of declining it.

In the years 1740, 41, 42, and 43, he furnished for the Gentleman's Magazine' a variety of publications, besides the Parliamentary debates. Among these were the lives of several eminent men ; an essay on the account of the conduct of the Duke of Marlborough, then the popular topic of conversation; and an advertisement for Osborne, concerning the 'Bibliotheca Harleiana, or a Catalogue of the Library of the Earl of Oxford.'-This was afterwards prefixed to the first volume of the Catalogue, in which the Latin account of books was written by him. Mr. Osborne purchased the library for £13,000, a sum which Mr. Oldys says in one of his manuscripts was not more than the binding of the books had cost, yet the slowness of the sale was such, that there was not much gained by it. It has been confidently related with many embellishments, that Johnson knocked Osborne down in his shop with a folio, and put his foot upon his neck. Johnson himself relates it differently to Mr. Boswell, "Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him; but it was not in his shop, it was in my own chamber." In 1744, he produced the Life of Savage, which he had announced his