At Oxford, he paid little attention to his regular tasks, but read, or rather devoured, all the books he could lay his hands on, and began to display his unrivalled conversational powers, being often seen “lounging about the college gates, with a circle of young students around him, whom he was entertaining with wit, keeping from their studies, and sometimes rousing to rebellion against the college discipline.”  He was, at this time, so miserably poor, that his shoes were worn to tatters, and his feet appeared through them, to the scandal of the Christ-Church men, when he occasionally visited their college.  Some compassionate individual laid a new pair at his door, which he tossed away with indignation.  At last,—­his debts increasing, his supplies diminishing, and his father becoming bankrupt,—­he was, in autumn 1731, compelled to leave college without a degree.  In the December of the same year his father died.

Perhaps there was not now in broad Britain a person apparently more helpless and hopeless than this tall, half-blind, half-mad, and wholly miserable lad, with ragged shoes, and no degree, left suddenly fatherless in Lichfield.  But he had a number of warm friends in his native place, such as Captain Garrick, father of the actor, and Gilbert Walmsley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court, who would not suffer him to starve outright.  He had learning and genius; and he had, moreover, under all his indolence and all his melancholy, an indomitable resolution, which needed only to be roused to make all obstacles melt before it.  He knew that he was great and strong, and would yet struggle into recognition.  At first, however, nothing offered save the post of usher in a school at Market-Bosworth, which he occupied long enough to learn to loathe the occupation with all his heart and soul, and mind and strength, but which he soon resigned, and was again idle.  He was invited next to spend some time with Mr Hector, an early friend, who was residing in Birmingham.  Here he became acquainted with one Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married.  Here, too, he executed his first literary work,—­a translation of Lobo’s “Voyage to Abyssinia,” which was published in 1735, and for which he received the munificent sum of five guineas!  He had previously, without success, issued proposals for an edition of the Latin poems of Politian; and, with a similar result, offered the service of his pen to Edward Cave, the editor and publisher of the Gentleman’s Magazine, to which he afterwards became a leading contributor.

Shortly after this, Porter dying, Johnson married the widow—­a lady more distinguished for sense, and particularly for the sense to appreciate his talents, than for personal charms, and who was twice her husband’s age.  It does not seem to have been a very happy match, although, probably, both parties loved each other better than they imagined.  He was now assisted by his wife’s portion, which amounted to L800, and opened a private academy at