ctionary in politics, upholding the arbitrary power of kings and
opposing the growing liberty of the people, yet his political theories,
like his manners, were no deeper than his skin; for in all London there was
none more kind to the wretched, and none more ready to extend an open hand
to every struggling man and woman who crossed his path. When he passed poor
homeless Arabs sleeping in the streets he would slip a coin into their
hands, in order that they might have a happy awakening; for he himself knew
well what it meant to be hungry. Such was Johnson,--a "mass of genuine
manhood," as Carlyle called him, and as such, men loved and honored
him.[194]

Life of Johnson. Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, in 1709. He
was the son of a small bookseller, a poor man, but intelligent and fond of
literature, as booksellers invariably were in the good days when every town
had its bookshop. From his childhood Johnson had to struggle against
physical deformity and disease and the consequent disinclination to hard
work. He prepared for the university, partly in the schools, but largely by
omnivorous reading in his father's shop, and when he entered Oxford he had
read more classical authors than had most of the graduates. Before
finishing his course he had to leave the university on account of his
poverty, and at once he began his long struggle as a hack writer to earn
his living.

At twenty-five years he married a woman old enough to be his mother,--a
genuine love match, he called it,--and with her dowry of L800 they started
a private school together, which was a dismal failure. Then, without money
or influential friends, he left his home and wife in Lichfield and tramped
to London, accompanied only by David Garrick, afterwards the famous actor,
who had been one of his pupils. Here, led by old associations, Johnson made
himself known to the booksellers, and now and then earned a penny by
writing prefaces, reviews, and translations.

It was a dog's life, indeed, that he led there with his literary brethren.
Many of the writers of the day, who are ridiculed in Pope's heartless
_Dunciad_, having no wealthy patrons to support them, lived largely in the
streets and taverns, sleeping on an ash heap or under a wharf, like rats;
glad of a crust, and happy over a single meal which enabled them to work
for a while without the reminder of hunger. A few favored ones lived in
wretched lodgings in Grub Street, which has since become