II—­Marriage and Settlement in London

Compelled by his father’s straitened circumstances, Johnson left Pembroke College in the autumn of 1731, without taking a degree, having been a member of it little more than three years.  In December of this year his father died.

In this forlorn state of his circumstances, he accepted an offer to be employed as usher in the school of Market Bosworth, in Leicestershire.  But he was strongly averse to the painful drudgery of teaching, and, having quarrelled with Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school, he relinquished after a few months a situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion and even a degree of horror.  Among the acquaintances he made at this period was Mr. Porter, a mercer at Birmingham, whose widow he afterwards married.  In what manner he employed his pen in 1733 I have not been able to ascertain.  He probably got a little money for occasional work, and it is certain that he was occupied about this time in the translation of Lobo’s “Voyage to Abyssinia,” which was published in 1735, and brought him five guineas from this same bookseller.  It is reasonable to suppose that his rendering of Lobo’s work was the remote occasion of his writing, many years after, his admirable philosophical tale, “Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.”

Miss Porter told me that when Mr. Johnson was first introduced to her mother his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible.  He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended to excite at once surprise and ridicule.  Mrs. Porter was so much engaged by his conversation that she overlooked all these external disadvantages, and said to her daughter, “This is the most sensible man that I ever saw in my life.”

Though Mrs. Porter, now a widow, was double the age of Johnson, and her person and manner, as described to me by the late Mr. Garrick, were by no means pleasing to others, she must have had a superiority of understanding and talents, as she certainly inspired him with a more than ordinary passion.  The marriage took place at Derby, on July 9, 1736.

He now set up a private academy, for which purpose he hired a large house well situated near his native city.  In the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1736 there is the following advertisement: 

“At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by SAMUEL JOHNSON.”

But the only pupils that were put under his care were the celebrated David Garrick and his brother George, and a Mr. Offely, a young gentleman of fortune, who died early.