brave, independent struggle, because he was too proud to do as other authors of the time did-seek for patronage; and so booksellers refused to take his books. Only his strong faith in God, and the merits of persevering work, had carried the doctor through the battle to fame and ease.

4. SAMUEL JOHNSON was the son of a bookseller at Lichfield. All his life long he suffered from a disease which affected his nerves and muscles, making him twist and twitch his face and body in a very painful way. It was thought, too, that the disease might one day affect his brain; so that, like poor Dean Swift, Johnson had the horror of madness always hanging over him. Very few boys afflicted in such a way as Johnson was would have worked and struggled as he did. When he was seven years old, he went to the Grammar School of Lichfield, where Addison had been until he was sent to Charter-house. At his next school in Stourbridge,1 though he was only fifteen, he began to teach in return for his lessons. His godfather helped to send Johnson to Oxford when he was nineteen; and there, though a very poor scholar, he began to show the independence which helped him through his literary efforts. He did not stay to take his degree, being probably too poor to do so. 5. At twenty-two years of age he found himself left to start life with only a sum of £20, left him by his father, who had just died. He went to be usher in a school; but very likely he found that the ruder boys laughed at his ungainly movements. At any rate, he soon gave up the post, and went to stay with an old school-fellow at Birmingham. There he made a little money by translating a book about travels in Abyssinia; and when he returned home he began writing for the Gentleman's Magazine, which had just been started. At Birmingham, Johnson had become acquainted with a widow, Mrs. Porter, very much older than himself, and when he was about twenty-seven he married the lady. They were very happy together, in spite of the difference in their ages. Mrs. Johnson had a little money, and with this Johnson started a school for boys near Lichfield.

1 Stourbridge, in Worcestershire.

But he had very few scholars-only three, two of them brothers of the name of Garrick.

6. While he kept this school, Johnson began to write a tragedy called Irene. When the school experiment proved a failure, and had to be given up, Johnson set off to London with his tragedy, and with David Garrick for company; while Mrs. Johnson stayed behind in Lichfield. Now began the hardest part of the fight. As Johnson was determined to make his way independently, he refused to seek a patron, sure that in the end publishers would learn that the public would buy books for their own merit and not for the patron's. Johnson worked busily at translations, and wrote for the Gentleman's Magazine; but still, work as he would, he often had to go dinnerless or supperless. His first work of note was a poem on London. Readers could see it was a real description of the great city as a struggling worker had found it. It was much read and talked about, and brought Johnson at once into notice.

Even Pope asked who had written it, and friends began to gather around him.

7. But Johnson went on still in his brave, earnest way. He had begun to make his Dictionary, a work which called for dull, patient, plodding labour rather than for learning or genius. It took eight years to finish; but meanwhile Johnson was writing other things. He published another poem, called The Vanity of Human Wishes, showing how empty and selfish it is to desire one's own glory at the expense of the good of mankind, instead of being content with the only pleasures to which one has a real right-health of mind and body, love, patience, contentment, and faith.

8. By this time Johnson's old pupil, David Garrick, had begun to be talked about as the greatest actor of the age; and he showed he had not forgotten his old friend and master, for he brought out Johnson's play Irene, and spared no pains to make it a success. But though Johnson's friends came to see and applaud it, the play was not popular. It was not bright or lively enough, so it was only played for a few nights. But it brought in a good deal of money to the author.

9. Johnson had also been busy writing a paper called The Rambler. He meant it to be like The Spectator and The Tatler of Addison and Steele; but it wanted the light, sparkling wit of Steele, and was not such a success as these papers. It lasted only two years, and during that time one of its most constant and interested readers was Dr. Johnson's wife. Strangely enough, her life ended just a few days after The Rambler's. Johnson never ceased to mourn her loss, and must have sadly missed her sympathy and encouragement, which through all his trials had never failed him.

10. Now that Johnson had no one but himself to work for, he wrote but little. The Dictionary was finished, and he only wrote some papers for The Adventurer and The Idler, two of the newspapers of the time. But when his mother, now a very old woman, fell ill, Johnson, finding he had no money to send her, borrowed some from his publisher, which he promised to repay by writing. With the money he sent a letter, in which he said,—

"You have been the best mother, and, I believe, the best

woman, in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have omitted to do well." So you see, besides being a great author, Dr. Johnson was also a good and dutiful son.

11. When his mother died, Johnson wrote a story, called Rasselas, to pay her funeral expenses. It tells how a prince of Abyssinia and his sister were shut up in the Happy Valley, away from all the care and want and misery of the outside world. But they wanted to know the world beyond the valley; so with an old philosopher they set out, and saw everywhere sin and wretchedness, and learned that man must not seek happiness in this world but in one beyond. In this story Johnson used the descriptions of Abyssinia he had found in the book he had translated.

12. Johnson's last years were passed in comfort. The king, George the Third, gave him a pension, which Johnson would accept only when he was told that it was for the work he had already done, not for any the Government might ask him to do. In his last years he did not need to write much. He published an edition of Shakespeare, The Lives of the Poets, an account of A Visit to the Hebrides, and some political works.

13. But though Johnson wrote little, he talked a great deal. He had a great many friends, whom he used to meet sometimes at Sir Joshua's, sometimes at the club, sometimes in his own house in Bolt Court. That house was a refuge for the sick and the unfortunate among the doctor's acquaintances. A blind and rather bad-tempered lady, a relative of his dead wife, lived with him for more than thirty years, having no other home. Another lady, a widowed daughter of an old friend of the doctor, made his house her home. Other inmates were a third lady, a poor negro, and a doctor who was unable to support himself. No wonder that one of Johnson's lady-friends said of him, "No man loves the poor like Dr. Johnson.” So you see, the rugged face and awkward ways hid a great deep heart, full of love for the poor, and also for little children and animals.

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14. Johnson had innumerable lady-friends with whom he loved to go and drink tea. One of these was Fanny Burney, the daughter of a well-known musician. She was a quiet but very observant girl, the last person one would have suspected of writing a book. Yet when a novel called Evelina came out, and all London was wondering who had written such a bright, clever picture of society (for there was no name on the titlepage), it was learned that the author was no other than this quiet young girl, who had been silently watching the company that gathered in her father's house, and studying character in that way. The success of Evelina showed that a book could rest on its own merits, for the name of the author was as little known as that of the publisher. Johnson, no doubt, liked this independent way of publishing, as well as the bright, clever story, so he became a good friend to the young lady, and advised her about her next novel Cecilia.

15. Some other lady-friends of Johnson were five sisters who kept a school in Bristol-the Misses More. One of them, Hannah, was an authoress. She wrote some ballads and stories for poor people, which were sold about the country by hawkers, and found their way into the homes of the poor people in Somersetshire, who at that time lived such degraded, violent lives, that people scarcely dared to go among them. Hannah More and her sisters also started schools for the poor in these out-of-theway villages, and so managed to do a great deal of good. After a time Hannah More left the school to her sisters, and came to London to write. She wrote a very good play called Percy, which Garrick brought out, and also some works on {education, in which, like Sir Thomas More and Defoe, she urged that women should have the same chances of education as

men.

16. Such were the friends among whom Dr. Johnson passed the latter half of his life. His love for them lasted till his death, which found him, not as he had feared, a victim to the insanity which had long threatened him, but sensible, calm, and cheerfully ready to fall into the last long sleep in which the soul passes to God.