y years which followed, was one hard
struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no
aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body
and an unsound mind. Before the young man left the university his
hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had
become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been
mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth,
eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought grounds
sufficient for absolving felons and for setting aside wills. His
grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and
sometimes terrified people who did not know him.

With such infirmities of body and of mind this celebrated man was
left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He
remained during about five years in the Midland Counties. At
Lichfield, his birthplace and his early home, he had inherited some
friends and acquired others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a
gay officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered there.
Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the
diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge of the
world, did himself honor by patronizing the young adventurer, whose
repulsive person, unpolished manners, and squalid garb moved many of
the petty aristocracy of the neighborhood to laughter or to disgust.
At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a
livelihood. He became usher of a grammar-school in Leicestershire; he
resided as a humble companion in the house of a country gentleman; but
a life of dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He
repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary
drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little noticed at the
time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put
forth proposals for publishing by subscription the poems of Politian,
with notes containing a history of modern Latin verse; but
subscriptions did not come in and the volume never appeared.

While leading this vagrant and miserable life Johnson fell in love.
The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow, who had
children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared
to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed
in gaudy colors, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces
which were not exactly those