2. Leslie Stephen.

Born 1832.

FROM Samuel Johnson,' CHAPTER I.

[The following extract illustrates good biographical narrative of medium fullness, written in a clear, direct style. The passage, which is based on Boswell, should be compared with the latter and with other long narratives, such as Lockhart's Life of Scott, and with short biographical sketches such as are found in any good newspaper. The passage sums up a discussion of Johnson's religious views, and gives a sketch of his mind as an introduction to the brief outline of his life which follows. The time is about six years.]

ON leaving the University, in 1731, the world was all before him. His father died in the end of the year, and Johnson's whole immediate inheritance was twenty pounds. Where was he to turn for daily bread? 5 Even in those days, most gates were barred with gold

and opened but to golden keys. The greatest chance for a poor man was probably through the Church. The career of Warburton, who rose from a similar position to a bishopric, might have been rivalled by 10 Johnson, and his connexions with Lichfield might, one would suppose, have helped him to a start. It would. be easy to speculate upon causes which might have. hindered such a career. In later life, he more than once refused to take orders upon the promise of a

In the English Men of Letters, edited by Mr. John Morley.

living. Johnson, as we know him, was a man of the world; though a religious man of the world. He represents the secular rather than the ecclesiastical type. So far as his mode of teaching goes, he is rather a disciple of Socrates than of St. Paul or 5 Wesley. According to him, a tavern-chair

66

was the

throne of human felicity," and supplied a better arena than the pulpit for the utterance of his message to mankind. And, though his external circumstances doubtless determined his method, there was much in his character which made it congenial. Johnson's religious emotions were such as to make habitual reserve almost a sanitary necessity. They were deeply coloured by his constitutional melancholy. Fear of death and hell were prominent in his personal 15 creed. To trade upon his feelings like a charlatan would have been abhorrent to his masculine character; and to give them full and frequent utterance like a genuine teacher of mankind would have been to imperil his sanity. If he had gone through the excite- 20 ment of a Methodist conversion, he would probably have ended his days in a madhouse.

Such considerations, however, were not, one may guess, distinctly present to Johnson himself; and the offer of a college fellowship or of private patronage 25 might probably have altered his career. He might have become a learned recluse or a struggling Parson Adams. College fellowships were less open to talent then than now, and patrons were never too propitious to the uncouth giant, who had to force his way by 30 sheer labour, and fight for his own hand. Accordingly, the young scholar tried to coin his brains into money

by the most depressing and least hopeful of employments. By becoming an usher in a school, he could at least turn his talents to account with little delay, and that was the most pressing consideration. By one 5 schoolmaster he was rejected on the ground that his infirmities would excite the ridicule of the boys. Under another he passed some months of "complicated misery," and could never think of the school without horror and aversion. Finding this situation Io intolerable, he settled in Birmingham, in 1733, to be near an old schoolfellow, named Hector, who was apparently beginning to practise as a surgeon. Johnson seems to have had some acquaintances among the comfortable families in the neighbourhood; but his 15 means of living are obscure. Some small literary work came in his way. He contributed essays to a local paper, and translated a book of Travels in Abyssinia. For this, his first publication, he received five guineas. In 1734 he made certain overtures to 20 Cave, a London publisher, of the result of which I shall have to speak presently. For the present it is pretty clear that the great problem of self-support had been very inadequately solved.

Having no money and no prospects, Johnson natur25 ally married. The attractions of the lady were not very manifest to others than her husband. She was the widow of a Birmingham mercer named Porter. Her age at the time (1735) of the second marriage was forty-eight, the bridegroom being not quite twenty-six. 30 The biographer's eye was not fixed upon Johnson till after his wife's death, and we have little in the way of authentic description of her person and character.

Garrick, who had known her, said that she was very fat, with cheeks coloured both by paint and cordials, flimsy and fantastic in dress and affected in her manners. She is said to have treated her husband with some contempt, adopting the airs of an anti- 5 quated beauty, which he returned by elaborate deference. Garrick used his wonderful powers of mimicry to make fun of the uncouth caresses of the husband, and the courtly Beauclerc used to provoke the smiles of his audience by repeating Johnson's assertion that 10 "it was a love-match on both sides." One incident of the wedding-day was ominous. As the newlymarried couple rode back from church, Mrs. Johnson showed her spirit by reproaching her husband for riding too fast, and then for lagging behind. Resolved 15 'not to be made the slave of caprice," he pushed on briskly till he was fairly out of sight. When she rejoined him, as he, of course, took care that she would soon do, she was in tears. Mrs. Johnson apparently knew how to regain supremacy; but, at any rate, John- 20 son loved her devotedly during life, and clung to her memory during a widowhood of more than thirty years, as fondly as if they had been the most pattern hero and heroine of romantic fiction.

66

Whatever Mrs. Johnson's charms, she seems to have 25 been a woman of good sense and some literary judgment. Johnson's grotesque appearance did not prevent her from saying to her daughter on their first · introduction, "This is the most sensible man I ever met." Her praises were, we may believe, sweeter to 30 him than those of the severest critics, or the most fervent of personal flatteries. Like all good men,

Johnson loved good women, and liked to have on hand a flirtation or two, as warm as might be within the bounds of due decorum. But nothing affected his fidelity to his Letty or displaced her image in his 5 mind. He remembered her in many solemn prayers, and such words as this was dear Letty's book "; or, "this was a prayer which dear Letty was accustomed to say," were found written by him in many of her books of devotion.

ΙΟ Mrs. Johnson had one other recommendation-a fortune, namely, of £800-little enough, even then, as a provision for the support of the married pair, but enough to help Johnson to make a fresh start. In 1736, there appeared an advertisement in the Gentleman's 15 Magazine. "At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages by Samuel Johnson." If, as seems probable, Mrs. Johnson's money supplied the funds for this venture, it was an unlucky speculation.

20

Johnson was not fitted to be a pedagogue. Success in that profession implies skill in the management of pupils, but perhaps still more decidedly in the management of parents. Johnson had little qualifications in either way. As a teacher he would probably have 25 been alternately despotic and over-indulgent; and, on the other hand, at a single glance the rough Dominie Sampson would be enough to frighten the ordinary parent off his premises. Very few pupils came, and they seem to have profited little, if a story as told of 30 two of his pupils refers to this time. After some months of instruction in English history, he asked them who had destroyed the monasteries. One