12 JOHNSON. 



has balanced in most countries their particular incon- 

 veniences by particular favours." 



For the next three years he lived between Birming- 

 ham and Lichfield, and having formed the acquaintance 

 of Mr. Porter, a mercer in the latter town, he became, 

 after his decease, attached to his widow, whom he 

 married in the summer of 1736. She is described as of 

 vulgar and affected manners, and of a person not merely 

 without attraction but repulsive, plain in her features, 

 which, though naturally florid, she loaded with red paint 

 as well as refreshed with cordials, large in her stature, 

 and disposed to corpulence. To this picture drawn by 

 Garrick, one of her friends has added, that she was a 

 person of good understanding and great sentimentality, 

 with a disposition towards sarcasm ; and it is certain that 

 the empire over her husband, which occasioned their 

 marriage, subsisted to her decease, sixteen years after, 

 and so far survived her that he continued for the rest of 

 his life to offer up prayers for her soul, beside ever 

 keeping the day of her death as a fast with pious 

 veneration. 



As she brought him but a few hundred pounds of 

 fortune, her husband having died insolvent, it was 

 necessary that the imprudence of the match should be 

 compensated by some exertion to obtain a living. They 

 therefore opened an Academy at Edial, near Lichfield; 

 but only three pupils presented themselves, of whom 

 Garrick and his brother were two; and after a few 

 months of vainly waiting for more, Johnson and Garrick 

 set forward to try their fortune in London, whither Mrs. 

 Johnson followed him some months later. 



It was in the Spring of 1737 that he came to reside 



