h the inevitable result
that he had to leave Oxford without a degree. This was in December
1729. But he had made an impression there, had a strong affection for
his College, and liked going to stay there in the days of his glory.
His usual host was one Dr. Adams, the Master of Pembroke, who had once
been his tutor but told Boswell that the relation was only nominal; "he
was above my mark." When he left Oxford he returned to his Lichfield
home, where his father died two months later, leaving so little behind
him that all that Johnson received of his estate was twenty pounds. He
seems to have remained at Lichfield, where the poverty of his family
did not prevent his mixing with the most cultivated society of a town
rich in cultivated people, till 1732, when he became an usher in a
school at Market Bosworth. He hated this monotonous drudgery {92} and
left it after a few months, going to live with a Mr. Warren, a
Birmingham bookseller of good repute, whom he helped by his knowledge
of literature. While in Birmingham he did a translation of a Jesuit
book about Abyssinia, for which Warren paid him five guineas. In 1734
he returned to Lichfield, tried without success to obtain subscribers
for an edition of the poems of Politian, and offered to write in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_. It is difficult to see how he supported
himself at this period: perhaps he was helped by his mother or by his
brother who carried on the bookselling business till his death a little
later. Anyhow it was just at this time that he took a step for which
poverty generally finds the courage more quickly than wealth. He
married Elizabeth Porter at St. Werburgh's Church, Derby, in July 1735.
Mrs. Porter was a widow twice his age and not of an attractive
appearance; but there is no doubt that Johnson's love for her was
sincere and lasting. To the end of his life he remembered her
frequently in his prayers "if it were lawful," and kept the anniversary
of her death with prayers and tears. Eighteen years after she died he
could write in his private note-books that his grief for her was not
abated and that he had less pleasure in any good that happened to him,
because she could not share {93} it: and in 1782 when she had been dead
thirty years, and he was drawing near his own end, he prays for her and
after doing so, noted "perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her.
Perhaps Tetty is now praying for me. God help me."

This was the inner truth of the r