84

Johnson an usher.

[A.D. 1738.

of her old friend, whose doors were always open to the unfortunate, and who well observed the precept of the Gospel, for he “was kind to the unthankful and to the evil1."'

In the forlorn state of his circumstances, he accepted of an offer to be employed as usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire, to which it appears, from one of his little fragments of a diary, that he went on foot, on the 16th of July. -Fulii 16. Bosvortiam pedes petii? But it is not true, as has been erroneously related, that he was assistant to the famous Anthony Blackwall, whose merit has been honoured by the testimony of Bishop Hurd3, who was his scholar; for Mr. Blackwall died on the 8th of April, 1730, more than a year before Johnson left the University 5.

This employment was very irksome to him in every respect, and he complained grievously of it in his letters to his friend Mr. Hector, who was now settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. The letters are lost; but Mr. Hector recollects his writing that the poet had described the dull sameness of his existence in these words," Vitam continet una dies" (one day contains the whole of my life); that it was unvaried as the note of the cuckow; and that he did not know whether it was more disagreeable for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules.' His general aversion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixey, the patron of the school, in whose house, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of domestick chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness; and, after suffering

Aetat. 23.]

His life in Birmingham.

85

for a few months such complicated misery', he relinquished a situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion, and even a degree of horrour2. But it is probable that at this period, whatever uneasiness he may have endured, he laid the foundation of much future eminence by application to his studies.

Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass some time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr. Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was the first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade, by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the assistance of his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical Essay printed in the news-paper, of which Warren was proprietor3. After very diligent inquiry, I have not been able to recover those early specimens of that particular mode of writing by which Johnson afterwards so greatly distinguished himself.

He continued to live as Mr. Hector's guest for about six

no intercourse with man to humanize the mind, no commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue the boors of nature.' Life of W. Hutton, p. 45.

It appears from a letter of Johnson's to a friend, dated Lichfield, July 27, 1732, that he had left Sir Wolstan Dixie's house recently, before that letter was written. MALONE.

The despicable wretchedness of teaching,' wrote Carlyle, in his twentyfourth year, when he was himself a teacher, 'can be known only to those who have tried it, and to Him who made the heart and knows it all. One meets with few spectacles more afflicting than that of a young man with a free spirit, with impetuous though honourable feelings, condemned to waste the flower of his life in such a calling; to fade in it by slow and sure corrosion of discontent;

86

Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia.

[A.D. 1733.

months, and then hired lodgings in another part of the town', finding himself as well situated at Birmingham' as he supposed he could be any where, while he had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of subsistence. He made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr. Taylor3, who by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his success in trade, acquired an immense fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old school-fellow and intimate friend, was Johnson's chief inducement to continue here.

In what manner he employed his pen at this period, or whether he derived from it any pecuniary advantage, I have not been able to ascertain. He probably got a little money from Mr. Warren; and we are certain, that he executed here one piece of literary labour, of which Mr. Hector has favoured me with a minute account. Having mentioned that he had read at Pembroke College a Voyage to Abyssinia, by Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit, and that he thought an abridgment and translation of it from the French into English might be an useful and profitable publication, Mr. Warren and Mr. Hector joined in urging him to undertake it. He accordingly agreed; and the book not being to be found in Birmingham, he borrowed it of Pembroke College. A part of the work being very soon done, one Osborn, who was Mr. Warren's printer, was set to work with what was ready, and Johnson engaged to supply the 'In the month of June 1733, I find him resident in the house of a person named Jarvis, at Birmingham.' Hawkins, p. 21. His wife's maiden name was Jarvis or Jervis.

2 In 1741, Hutton, a runaway apprentice, arrived at Birmingham. He says, 'I had never seen more than five towns, Nottingham, Derby, Burton, Lichfield and Walsall. The outskirts of these were composed of wretched dwellings, visibly stamped with dirt and poverty. But the buildings in the exterior of Birmingham rose in a style of elegance. Thatch, so plentiful in other places, was not to be met with in this. The people possessed a vivacity I had never

beheld. I had been among dreamers, but now I saw men awake. Their very step along the street showed alacrity. Every man seemed to know what he was about. The faces of other men seemed tinctured with an idle gloom; but here with a pleasing alertness. Their appearance was strongly marked with the modes of civil life. Life of W. Hutton, p. 41.

3 Hutton, in his account of the Birmingham riots of 1791, describing the destruction of a Mr. Taylor's house, says, 'The sons of plunder forgot that the prosperity of Birmingham was owing to a Dissenter, father to the man whose property they were destroying ;' ib. p. 181.

press

Aetat. 24.]

Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia.

87

press with copy as it should be wanted; but his constitutional indolence soon prevailed, and the work was at a stand. Mr. Hector, who knew that a motive of humanity would be the most prevailing argument with his friend, went to Johnson, and represented to him, that the printer could have no other employment till this undertaking was finished, and that the poor man and his family were suffering. Johnson upon this exerted the powers of his mind, though his body was relaxed. He lay in bed with the book, which was a quarto, before him, and dictated while Hector wrote. Mr. Hector carried the sheets to the press, and corrected almost all the proof sheets, very few of which were even seen by Johnson. In this manner, with the aid of Mr. Hector's active friendship, the book was completed, and was published in 1735, with LONDON upon the title-page, though it was in reality printed at Birmingham, a device too common with provincial publishers. For this work he had from Mr. Warren only the sum of five guineas1.

This being the first prose work of Johnson, it is a curious object of inquiry how much may be traced in it of that style which marks his subsequent writings with such peculiar excellence; with so happy an union of force, vivacity, and perspicuity. I have perused the book with this view, and have found that here, as I believe in every other translation, there is in the work itself no vestige of the translator's own style; for the language of translation being adapted to the thoughts of another person, insensibly follows their cast, and, as it were, runs into a mould that is ready prepared.

Thus, for instance, taking the first sentence that occurs at the opening of the book, p. 4.

'I lived here above a year, and completed my studies in divinity; in which time some letters were received from the fathers of Ethiopia, with an account that Sultan Segned3, Emperour of Abyssinia, was converted to the church of Rome; that many of his subjects had followed

Johnson, it should seem, did not think himself ill-used by Warren; for writing to Hector on April 15, 1755, he says, 'What news of poor Warren? I have not lost all my kindness for him.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. iii. 301.

2 That it is by no means an exact translation Johnson's Preface shows. He says that in the dissertations alone an exact translation has been attempted. The rest of the work he describes as an epitome.

3 In the original, Segued.

88

Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia.

[A.D. 1733.

his example, and that there was a great want of missionaries to improve these prosperous beginnings. Every body was very desirous of seconding the zeal of our fathers, and of sending them the assistance they requested; to which we were the more encouraged, because the Emperour's letter informed our Provincial, that we might easily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala; but, unhappily, the secretary wrote Geila' for Dancala, which cost two of our fathers their lives.'

Every one acquainted with Johnson's manner will be sensible that there is nothing of it here; but that this sentence might have been composed by any other man.

But, in the Preface, the Johnsonian style begins to appear; and though use had not yet taught his wing a permanent and equable flight, there are parts of it which exhibit his best manner in full vigour. I had once the pleasure of examining it with Mr. Edmund Burke, who confirmed me in this opinion, by his superiour critical sagacity, and was, I remember, much delighted with the following specimen :

'The Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general vein of his countrymen, has amused his reader with no romantick absurdity, or incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at least probable; and he who tells nothing exceeding the bounds of probability, has a right to demand that they should believe him who cannot contradict him.

'He appears, by his modest and unaffected narration, to have described things as he saw them, to have copied nature from the life, and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening the neighbouring inhabitants".

"The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private or social virtues. Here are no Hottentots without religious polity or articulate language3;

In the original, Zeila.

Lobo, in describing a waterfall on the Nile, had said :-'The fall of this mighty stream from so great a height makes a noise that may be heard to a considerable distance; but I could not observe that the neigh

bouring inhabitants were at all deaf. I conversed with several, and was as easily heard by them as I heard them,' p. 101.

3 In the original, without religion, polity, or articulate language.

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