or, that his shoes
were worn to tatters, and his feet appeared through them, to the
scandal of the Christ-Church men, when he occasionally visited their
college. Some compassionate individual laid a new pair at his door,
which he tossed away with indignation. At last,--his debts increasing,
his supplies diminishing, and his father becoming bankrupt,--he was,
in autumn 1731, compelled to leave college without a degree. In the
December of the same year his father died.

Perhaps there was not now in broad Britain a person apparently more
helpless and hopeless than this tall, half-blind, half-mad, and wholly
miserable lad, with ragged shoes, and no degree, left suddenly
fatherless in Lichfield. But he had a number of warm friends in his
native place, such as Captain Garrick, father of the actor, and
Gilbert Walmsley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court, who would not
suffer him to starve outright. He had learning and genius; and he had,
moreover, under all his indolence and all his melancholy, an
indomitable resolution, which needed only to be roused to make all
obstacles melt before it. He knew that he was great and strong, and
would yet struggle into recognition. At first, however, nothing
offered save the post of usher in a school at Market-Bosworth, which
he occupied long enough to learn to loathe the occupation with all his
heart and soul, and mind and strength, but which he soon resigned, and
was again idle. He was invited next to spend some time with Mr
Hector, an early friend, who was residing in Birmingham. Here he
became acquainted with one Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards
married. Here, too, he executed his first literary work,--a
translation of Lobo's "Voyage to Abyssinia," which was published in
1735, and for which he received the munificent sum of five guineas! He
had previously, without success, issued proposals for an edition of
the Latin poems of Politian; and, with a similar result, offered the
service of his pen to Edward Cave, the editor and publisher of the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, to which he afterwards became a leading
contributor.

Shortly after this, Porter dying, Johnson married the widow--a lady
more distinguished for sense, and particularly for _the_ sense to
appreciate his talents, than for personal charms, and who was twice
her husband's age. It does not seem to have been a very happy match,
although, probably, both parties loved each other better than they
imagined. He was now a