as a proof of his early maturity in that manner, may serve to gratify the reader, and to prove the truth of the foregoing remark.

"This Traveller has consulted his senses and 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 natives here described either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private or social virtues. Here are no Hottentots without religious piety or articulable language, no Chinese perfectly polite and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial enquirer, that where human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced in most countries their particular inconveniences by particular favours."

For the next three years he lived between Birmingham and Lichfield, and having formed the acquaintance of Mr. Porter, a mercer in the latter town, he became, after his decease, attached to his widow, whom he married in the summer of 1736. She is described as of vulgar and affected manners, and of a person not merely without attraction but repulsive, plain in her features, which though naturally florid, she loaded with red paint as well as refreshed with cordials, large in her stature, and disposed to corpulence. To this picture drawn by Garrick, one of her friends has added, that she was a person of good understanding and great sentimentality, with a disposition towards sarcasm; and it is certain that the empire over her husband, which occasioned their marriage, subsisted

to her decease, sixteen years after, and so far survived her that he continued for the rest of his life to offer up prayers for her soul, beside ever keeping the day of her death as a fast with pious veneration.

As she brought him but a few hundred pounds of fortune, her husband having died insolvent, it was necessary that the imprudence of the match should be compensated by some exertion to obtain a living. They therefore opened an Academy at Edial, near Lichfield; but only three pupils presented themselves, of whom Garrick and his brother were two; and after a few months of vainly waiting for more, Johnson and Garrick set forward to try their fortune in London, whither Mrs. Johnson followed him some months later.

It was in the Spring of 1737 that he came to reside in London; and he now entered upon a life of as complete dependence on literary labour as is to be found in the history of letters. No man ever was more an author by profession than he appears to have been for a quarter of a century; and he suffered during that period all the evils incident to that precarious employment. Of these the principal certainly is, that there being no steady demand for the productions of the pen, the author is perpetually obliged to find out subjects on which he may be employed, and to entice employers: thus, unlike most other labourers, stimulating the demand as well as furnishing the supply. Hence we find Johnson constantly suggesting works on which he is willing to be employed, and often failing to obtain the concurrence of his publisher. For some years, before he had left Lichfield, he had made unsuccessful attempts of this kind. A proposal to publish Politian's Latin Poems was printed by him in 1734, in conjunction with his brother, who had succeeded to his father's shop. Notes on the history of Modern Latin Poetry and a life of Politian were to be subjoined; but, as might be easily foreseen, this

project met with no kind of encouragement. Indeed it would hardly succeed in our own times as a speculation for profit to the author. The success of the 'Gentleman's Magazine' next seems to have struck him as affording the hope of a connexion with Mr. Cave, its conductor; and to him he addressed a letter under a feigned name, proposing to write articles the subjects of which he thought he could suggest so as to benefit the work, hinting also at other literary schemes which he was prepared to unfold "if he could be secure from having others reap the advantage of what he should suggest." But it does not appear, though Cave answered the letter, that his reply was so favourable as to produce any result. Upon settling in London, however, he propitiated that respectable publisher with some very middling sapphics in his praise, which were inserted in the Magazine, and he was from thenceforth employed pretty regularly in writing criticisms, biographies, and other papers, so that for many years this miscellany formed the principal source of his slender income. He, however, eked it out with other occasional writings. A new translation (at his suggestion) was undertaken by Dodsley and Cave of Father Paul's celebrated History,' with Le Courayer's Notes, which had been recently added to the French edition. It appears that Johnson was paid in small sums, about fifty pounds, on account of this work, which was given up in consequence of another being announced, and by a singular coincidence, also the production of a Samuel Johnson, who was patronized by the Clergy. He, moreover, wrote prefaces to different books, and, soon after he settled in London, he published the admirable translation of Juvenal's Third Satire, entitled 'London,' which at once gave him a high place among the poets of the day. It was followed some years later by the Vanity of Human Wishes,' an Imitation of the Tenth. It is known that Pope at once expressed his hearty admiration of the

'London' in no measured terms, feeling none of the petty jealousy which might have been occasioned by the fickle multitude's exclamation, "Here is arisen an obscure poet greater than Pope;" his remark was, Depend upon it, he will soon be drawn out from

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his retreat."

Nothing can be more painful than to contemplate the struggles in which these years of his penury were passed, more especially the earlier ones, after he came to London. He dined at a boarding-house or ordinary for eight pence, including a penny which he allowed the servant. The tone of his correspondence with Cave ever and anon lets his wants appear. One letter subscribed with his name, has the significant, it is to be feared the literary word, impransus, prefixed to the signature. Another in 1742, while the Fra Paolo was going on, mentions his having "received money on this work, £13 2s. 6d., reckoning the half guinea of last Saturday." In the postscript he adds, "If you can spare me another guinea I should take it very kindly, but if not I shall not think it an injury." All the little valuables, including a small silver cup and spoon given him by his mother, when he was brought up to be touched for the evil, were offered for sale, to buy necessaries in the pressing wants of himself and his wife, and the spoon only was kept. Nay, an affecting anecdote is furnished by Mr. Harte, author of Gustavus Adolphus's Life, that having dined with Cave and commended one of Johnson's writings, Cave afterwards told him how happy it had made the author to hear him thus express himself. "How can that be," said Harte, "when there were only our two selves present?" "Yes," said Cave, "but you might observe a plate with victuals sent from the table. Johnson was behind the screen, where he ate it, being too meanly dressed to appear.' It is truly afflicting to think that the work thus praised was his beautiful poem of London.' The penury too in which he

existed seems to have long survived the obscurity of his earlier life in London. As late as 1759, after he had been two-and-twenty years in the world of letters, and had in several of its provinces attained great eminence as an author, while his mother was on her death-bed he had to borrow of his printer six of the twelve guineas he sent to supply her pressing wants; and in the evenings of the week after her decease, he wrote his 'Rasselas, in order to defray the expenses of her funeral and discharge a few debts which she had left. He received a hundred pounds for it.

Nor must it be forgotten that to these miseries, the general lot of the literary man's life, was added in Johnson's the far worse suffering from his constitutional complaint, a suffering bad enough in itself if the companion of ease and of affluence, but altogether intolerable when it weighs down the spirits and the faculties of him whose mental labour must contribute to the supply of his bodily wants. The exertion, no doubt, when once made, is the best medicine for the disease; but it is the peculiar operation of the disease to render all such exertion painful in the extreme, to make the mind recoil from it, and render the intellectual powers both torpid and sluggish, when a painful effort has put them in motion. I speak with some confidence on a subject which accident has enabled me to study in the case of one with whom I was well acquainted for many years; and who either outlived the malady, which in him was hereditary, or obtained a power over it by constant watchfulness, diligent care, and a fixed resolution to conquer it. As in Johnson's case, it was remittent, but also periodical, a thing not mentioned of Johnson's; for in my friend's case it recurred at intervals, first of six months, then of a year, aiterwards of two and three years, until it ceased; and the duration of the attack was never more than of eight or ten months. It seemed wholly unconnected