erary figure of his age; and this is in no small measure due
to his good fortune in having such a champion and biographer as James
Boswell. Johnson's Life by Boswell is without a rival among biographies:
in the words of Macaulay: "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic
poets; Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists;
Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is
the first of biographers;" and Burke has said that Johnson appears far
greater in Boswell's book than in his own. We thus know everything about
Johnson, as we do not know about any other literary man, and this
knowledge, due to his biographer, is at least one of the elements of
Johnson's immense reputation.

He was born at Lichfield on the 18th of September, 1709. His father was a
bookseller; and after having had a certain amount of knowledge "well
beaten into him" by Mr. Hunter, young Johnson was for two years an
assistant in his father's shop. But such was his aptitude for learning,
that he was sent in 1728 to Pembroke College, Oxford. His youth was not a
happy one: he was afflicted with scrofula, "which disfigured a countenance
naturally well formed, and hurt his visual nerves so much that he did not
see at all with one of his eyes." He had a morbid melancholy,--fits of
dejection which made his life miserable. He was poor; and when, in 1731,
his father died insolvent, he was obliged to leave the university without
a degree. After fruitless attempts to establish a school, he married, in
1736, Mrs. Porter, a widow, who had L800. Rude and unprepossessing to
others, she was sincerely loved by her husband, and deeply lamented when
she died. In 1737 Johnson went to London in company with young Garrick,
who had been one of his few pupils, and who was soon to fill the English
world with his theatrical fame.

LONDON.--Johnson soon began to write for Cave's _Gentleman's Magazine_,
and in 1738 he astonished Pope and the artificial poets by producing, in
their best vein, his imitation of the third Satire of Juvenal, which he
called _London_. This was his usher into the realm of literature. But he
did not become prominent until he had reached his fiftieth year; he
continued to struggle with gloom and poverty, too proud to seek patronage
in an age when popular remuneration had not taken its place. In 1740 he
was a reporter of the debates in parliament for Cave; and it is said that
many of the indifferent speakers were as