Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass some time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr. Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded.  Mr. Warren was the first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade, by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the assistance of his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical Essay printed in the newspaper, of which Warren was proprietor.  After very diligent inquiry, I have not been able to recover those early specimens of that particular mode of writing by which Johnson afterwards so greatly distinguished himself.

He continued to live as Mr. Hector’s guest for about six months, and then hired lodgings in another part of the town, finding himself as well situated at Birmingham as he supposed he could be any where, while he had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of subsistence.  He made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr. Taylor, who by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his success in trade, acquired an immense fortune.  But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old school-fellow and intimate friend, was Johnson’s chief inducement to continue here.

His juvenile attachments to the fair sex were very transient; and it is certain that he formed no criminal connection whatsoever.  Mr. Hector, who lived with him in his younger days in the utmost intimacy and social freedom, has assured me, that even at that ardent season his conduct was strictly virtuous in that respect; and that though he loved to exhilarate himself with wine, he never knew him intoxicated but once.

In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally concentrated in one object.  This was experienced by Johnson, when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband’s death.  Miss Porter told me, that when he 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 scrophula 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 surprize 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.’