diocese." He read much, and knew much about books, but did not understand the art of selling them, for when he died all the money he could leave his son was a pittance of twenty pounds. Unfortunately he left him also an unhealthy, though powerful, body, and a "vile melancholy " that haunted him through life. The infant was afflicted with scrofula, and at the age of two years was taken up to London to be touched by Queen Anne.

At school, after the fashion of the time, Johnson had Latin whipped into him, but he scarcely needed such a stimulus, for the faculty of acquisition was early developed, and his father regarded him as a prodigy. Leaving school at sixteen, two years were spent, but not idly, at home; for he said in later days, that he knew almost as much at eighteen as he did at fiftythree. In 1728 he began residence at Pembroke College, where he astonished his tutor by quoting Macrobius. As a Christmas exercise he translated Pope's "Messiah" into Latin verse, and did it so well as to make his name known in the University. Pope also is said to have praised it highly.

There he remained three years, and there he had his first experience of the misery endured by a proud man, as poor as he was proud. His ability was acknowledged; and in any revolt against established authority, the future Tory and orthodox churchman was the leader of the mutiny. "I was miserably poor," he said afterwards, "and thought to fight my way by my literature

diocese." He read much, and knew much about books, but did not understand the art of selling them, for when he died all the money he could leave his son was a pittance of twenty pounds. Unfortunately he left him also an unhealthy, though powerful, body, and a "vile melancholy " that haunted him through life. The infant was afflicted with scrofula, and at the age of two years was taken up to London to be touched by Queen Anne.

At school, after the fashion of the time, Johnson had Latin whipped into him, but he scarcely needed such a stimulus, for the faculty of acquisition was early developed, and his father regarded him as a prodigy. Leaving school at sixteen, two years were spent, but not idly, at home; for he said in later days, that he knew almost as much at eighteen as he did at fiftythree. In 1728 he began residence at Pembroke College, where he astonished his tutor by quoting Macrobius. As a Christmas exercise he translated Pope's "Messiah" into Latin verse, and did it so well as to make his name known in the University. Pope also is said to have praised it highly.

There he remained three years, and there he had his first experience of the misery endured by a proud man, as poor as he was proud. His ability was acknowledged; and in any revolt against established authority, the future Tory and orthodox churchman was the leader of the mutiny. "I was miserably poor," he said afterwards, "and thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit." But his poverty was an "unconquerable bar." The outward and visible signs of it cut him to the quick; and when a well-meaning friend placed a new pair of shoes at his door, he flung them out of the window. It was in this time of distress that he read Law's "Serious Call," and found its arguments unanswerable. "This," he says, "was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry." Driven by sheer want, Johnson left his college in 1731, without a degree; and Pembroke, which did nothing, and perhaps could do nothing, for her famous son in life, has honoured herself by placing his effigy over her gates.

A long and weary servitude had now to be endured, and the record of Johnson's life up to his fifty-third year is one of ceaseless struggle borne without complaint. To gain a livelihood he accepted the post of usher in a school at Market-Bosworth, but escaped in a few months as from a prison house. Thence he went to Birmingham, living for a while under the hospitable roof of an old schoolfellow, and earning a few pounds from the booksellers. In this indigent condition, and with the boldness that often accompanies an empty purse, Johnson fell in love with Mrs. Porter, a widow, old enough to be his mother. "It was a love affair on both sides,"

1 With the wife Johnson gained also a step-daughter, to whom, according to some reports, he had, like Harry Esmond, made love before winning the mother. If so he was hardly kind to his ancient flame by hinting in later