Shakespeare was originally a poor man:  “It is a question,” says Carlyle, “whether, had not want, discomfort, and distress warrants been busy at Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare had not lived killing calves or combing wool!  “To Milton’s and Dryden’s narrow means we probably owe the best part of their works.

Johnson was a very poor man, and a very brave one.  He never knew what wealth was.  His mind was always greater than his fortune; and it is the mind that makes the man rich or poor, happy or miserable.  Johnson’s gruff and bluff exterior covered a manly and noble nature.  He had early known poverty and debt, and wished himself clear of both.  When at college, his feet appeared through his shoes, but he was too poor to buy new ones.  His head was full of learning, but his pockets were empty.  How he struggled through distress and difficulty during his first years in London the reader can learn from his “Life.”  He bedded and boarded for fourpence-halfpenny a day, and when too poor to pay for a bed, he wandered with Savage whole nights in the streets.[1] He struggled on manfully, never whining at his lot, but trying to make the best of it.

[Footnote 1:  “He said a man might live in a garret at eighteen-pence a week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, ‘Sir, I am to be found at such a place.’  By spending threepence in a coffee house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper.  On clean-shirt day he went abroad and paid visits.”  BOSWELL—­Life of Johnson.]

These early sorrows and struggles of Johnson left their scars upon his nature; but they also enlarged and enriched his experience, as well as widened his range of human sympathy.  Even when in his greatest distress he had room in his heart for others whose necessities were greater than his own; and he was never wanting in his help to those who needed it, or were poorer than himself.

From his sad experience, no one could speak with greater authority on the subject of debt than Johnson.  “Do not accustom yourself,” he wrote to Boswell, “to consider debt only an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.  Let it be your first care not to be in any man’s debt.  Whatever you have, spend less.  Frugality is not only the basis of quiet, but of beneficence.”  To Simpson, the barrister, he wrote, “Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound:  great debts are like cannon, of loud noise, but little danger.  You must therefore be enabled to discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure, with security to struggle with the rest.”  “Sir,” said he to the patient and receptive Boswell, “get as much peace of mind as you can, and keep within your income, and you won’t go far wrong.”