10 JOHNSON. 



observation was indeed highly laudatory. " The writer 

 of this Poem," said he, " will leave it doubtful in after- 

 times which was the original, his verses or mine." 



On his return to Lichfield he found his father's affairs 

 in a state of hopeless insolvency ; and before the end of 

 the year (1731) he died. A few months more were 

 spent in the place; and he frequented now, as he had 

 done before, a circle of excellent provincial society, of 

 which accomplished and well-bred women of family formed 

 an important part. The accounts of his conversation at 

 this time all agree in representing it as intelligent, but 

 modest ; his manner awkward enough as far as regarded 

 external qualities, but civilized ; and his whole demeanour 

 free from that roughness and even moroseness which it 

 afterwards acquired, partly from living much alone during 

 his struggles for subsistence, partly from the effects of 

 his mental and nervous malady ; in no little degree, also, 

 from the habit of living in a small circle of meek and 

 submissive worshippers. 



In the summer of 1732 he accepted an appointment 

 as usher to a school at Market Bosworth ; but to the 

 labour of teaching he never could inure himself ; and it 

 was rendered more intolerable by the duty which devolved 

 upon him of acting as kind of lay-chaplain to Sir Walter 

 Dixie, the patron of the school, a situation in which lie 

 was treated with haughtiness and even harshness. To 

 the few months which he thus passed he ever after looked 

 back, not merely with aversion, but with a kind of horror. 

 He now removed to Birmingham, where he was 

 employed by Warren, a bookseller, and the first who 

 settled in that great town. He carried on a newspaper 

 in which Johnson wrote, who also translated from the 



