grapher and critic, was the son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller at Lichfield, and born there, 18th September, 1709. Afflicted in early life with scrofula, he was taken to Queen Anne to be touched, according to the notions then prevalent. He was first at school at Lichfield, then at Stourbridge, then went to Pembroke college, Oxford. From youth he was distinguished by the moral and physical peculiarities that afterwards made him so remarkable. With a large and powerful person; with much awkwardness of manner, much vehemence, yet much indolence; a generous and manly heart, yet morbid and melancholy—he entered life by the bitter road of poverty, and was too long in the stony way ever after to shake off the marks and stains of his travel. His countenance was disfigured by his complaint, and his sight and hearing were also affected. That a man of great talent, under these circumstances, should exhibit peculiarities of temper is assuredly no wonder. The wonder is that Johnson's strength of mind enabled him to triumph over so many difficulties, and to leave an honoured name for the especial esteem of his countrymen. Although indolent, he was not idle. He acquired knowledge in spite of his many infirmities. At college his strange mien and uncouth manners brought him humiliation, but humiliation only served to rouse the spirit of opposition. He was still unsubdued, and occasionally rebellious. Having to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verses, he executed his task with so much spirit, that Pope is said to have declared that posterity would doubt which was the original, and which the translation. His father died in 1731, but not before Samuel had been obliged to quit the university without a degree on account of his poverty. With a fortune of £20, a disordered frame, a hypochondriacal temperament, and a tendency to something like monomania, Johnson had to make his way in the world. The prospect was not encouraging; but a patient and stout heart had been given to Samuel, and in the course of time he overcame the difficulties that would have swallowed up ordinary men. The business of life he commenced by entering as usher in a school at Market Bosworth in Leicestershire; but the drudgery of that occupation was unsuitable, perhaps unbearable, and he tried to earn his bread by translating for a bookseller in Birmingham. In that capacity he translated the Latin work of Jerome Sabo on Abyssinia. In the midst of his troubles he fell in love with a widow twenty years older than himself, and married Mrs. Porter, whose fortune of £800 he attempted to turn to profit by opening a school. Eighteen months passed and three pupils were the whole of his educational flock—one of them being David Garrick, who in after life turned the foibles of his master into food for his buffoonery. At the age of twenty-eight, Johnson resolved to seek his fortune in London, and thither he repaired, accompanied by Garrick. His lot fell in the evil days of literature. The time had passed away when the patronage of the great was conferred on the brethren of the pen, and the modern race of readers had not come into existence. There were no patrons, and it may almost be said that there was no public. On the shore of literature the tide was at low water, and Johnson must wait till the flood began to flow. An author by hard work might earn a crust and contumely; but here, as in every other department of man's existence, the pioneer must go beforehand and open up the way for less powerful men to follow after in comparative ease. The profession of literature owes no small debt of gratitude to the huge man of uncouth nature, who fought so brave a battle in the early times, who made literature honourable, and who left not merely his own name, but his whole profession, in a position of respect which he won by unflinching toil, courage, and rectitude. To Shakspeare the profession of literature owes nothing, nor the profession of actor. He was too far removed from the current of common life, to allow even the members of his brotherhood to be in any way identified with him. Of Milton much the same may be said. The public writer is not in the public mind connected with John Milton or William Shakspeare. The same may be said of Burns, and to some extent of Byron. Such men were individual, and stood and stand alone. They brought fame to themselves, but no new estimation to the profession of author. It was above all to Samuel Johnson that the profession of author owes the social position to which it has attained. Johnson was the great pioneer of the brotherhood of the pen, the first grandmaster of the new order that was to assume the place of a fourth estate in the realm, and to guide and direct, if not to rule, the public counsels of England. Our Dickenses, our Thackerays, our Bulwers, our able editors, our laborious workmen of the desk and pen, have risen to the place of artists, and are regarded by the public as not less necessary and reputable than the great engineers who conduct works physical, or the painters, sculptors, and architects, who shed on life some rays of beauty drawn from the realm of art. Dr. Johnson was the man who pioneered the trade of authorship into a new region, and won for his profession the respect and esteem of the British public. We have then briefly to follow him in his course, and to note in the fewest words how he performed the achievement.
Johnson on his arrival in London had no other resource than to write for the booksellers, which at that period, and perhaps at most others, was a barren enough field on which to raise a livelihood. It was at all events much worse then than now. He wrote his "London" in imitation of the third satire of Juvenal, and for it received ten guineas from Dodsley. The poverty and misfortunes of his friend Savage, are said to have originated the work. His regular work was in the service of Cave the bookseller, who kept Johnson employed on pamphlets, prefaces, essays, and papers for the Gentleman's Magazine. He was on the very lowest step of the ladder—a literary workman of the meanest class, with no social estimation whatever, and all accessory circumstances against him; yet with a brave English heart within that worked on in the full assurance that work was right and good in itself, whatever it might bring in the meantime. Like a genuine Anglo-Saxon, of which race Johnson was one of the truest types, he was a full believer in work. His profit was small, but the work was done.
The Gentleman's Magazine owed considerable part of its reputation to the report of proceedings in parliament—to publish which, however, was contrary to law. Cave evaded the law by reporting the speeches in the parliament of Lilliput—France was Blefescu; London, Mildendo, and so forth. Johnson was employed to write the debates, and from a few imperfect notes had to manufacture the arguments and the eloquence. One of the peculiarities of Johnson's character is here notable. He was a man of great talent, powerful impulses, poor, subject to every species of social humiliation, and was compelled to direct his attention habitually to politics. From such a cauldron we might have expected an overflow of boiling radicalism. But not at all. Johnson—the poor, uncouth, ugly, despised, quill-driving, hired author—was an English tory of the stanchest creed; a church and state man; an upright downright tory in the strongest sense of the word; a man for altar and throne against all the world; as high a tory as any squire or lord in the kingdom, and as firm a believer in all things established. Probably this deep conservatism of nature brought him through at last infinitely better than an opposite feeling. It was a happy circumstance for Johnson that he was a tory; for however erroneous arbitrary principles of government may be, the conservative tendency saved a noble-minded man from almost inevitable ruin. Had he been a radical, he most likely would have gone "whistling down the wind" to despair. History principles, of course, did not desert him while manufacturing parliamentary speeches. He made the "whig dogs" use the worst arguments and get the worst of the debates. To have done otherwise would have been contrary to his conscientious convictions. From 1740 for several years Johnson continued his occupation. In 1743 Savage died, and Johnson the following year published his "Life of Savage," which gained the approbation not only of the reading public, but of the best critics and the booksellers. In 1747 a proposal was made to him to prepare a dictionary of the English language, in 2 vols., folio. The booksellers were to pay him 1500 guineas, and out of that sum he was to find materials and pay assistants. The prospectus was addressed to the earl of Chesterfield, to whom the dictionary was to have been dedicated. Johnson flattered himself that he would get through the two volumes at the close of 1750, but they were not completed till five years afterwards. In 1749 appeared "The Vanity of Human Wishes," scarcely inferior in excellence to the tenth satire of Juvenal, which served as its model. The tragedy of "Irene" was also brought out under the auspices of his friend Garrick, and went through nine representations, which brought 300 guineas to the author. From March, 1750, to March, 1752, appeared the "Rambler," which, curiously enough, only became popular when republished. At the latter date, 1752, the "Rambler" was discontinued in consequence of the grief occasioned by the loss of his wife. In 1754 he went to Oxford to consult the libraries,
