hat was the
most pressing consideration. By one 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
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 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 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 naturally 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. 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 antiquated 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 "it was a love-match on both sides." One
incident of the wedding-day was ominous. As the newly-married couple
rode back from church, Mrs. Johnson showed her spirit by reproaching
her husband for riding too fast, and then for lagging behind. Resolved
"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 should soon do, she was in tears. Mrs. Johnson apparently knew
how to regain sup