67 
his mind as afterwards he fed his body — and laid the founda- 
tions of his wide and varied knowledge. He went at the 
age of eighteen to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he did 
little and whence he departed without a degree. He became 
“ Dr.” Johnson by virtue of honorary degrees from Dublin 
(1765) and Oxford (1775). 
The father died in the year in which the son left the Uni- 
versity. The latter inherited a patrimony of £20, and, after 
being usher in a school, he married, in 1735, Mrs. Elizabeth 
Porter, an affected widow old enough to be his mother. It 
was a curious match, but Johnson adored his wife and mourned 
her dead. Mrs. Porter brought him £800, on which he set 
up a school at Edial, near Lichfield, where he had three 
pupils. The school being a failure, Johnson went to London 
and took to literature. He followed for many years the 
hard and hungry trade of a literary hack, writing translations, 
parliamentary reports, poems, memoirs, etc., until he took 
up the Dictionary, upon which he employed six amanuenses 
and slaved himself. It was in connection with the Dictionary 
that he wrote his tremendous letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, 
who had, he judged, played him false in the matter of patron- 
age. His “ Rambler,” though “ a heavy class of lay-sermon- 
ising,” did more to attract the reading world, and he escaped 
from the danger of being unemployed. 
As long as diligence was necessary he wrote, but no longer. 
In 1762 he received a pension of £300 a year for distinguished 
literary service and came to the front in intellectual circles. 
As a conversationist he was unrivalled, and argumentative 
to a degree. Said Goldsmith, “ There is no arguing with 
Johnson : if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with 
the butt-end.” His wit was of a robust type and his humour 
sometimes rather rollicking, but he could say a neat “ pawky ” 
thing upon occasion. 
Johnson wrote little during his last twenty years or so, 
but what he did write shews how his talking had improved 
and simplified his style, which in his earlier years lifid been 
too full of heavy Latinisms. 
He was bulky and uncouth of frame, strange of gesture, 
and unaccountable in many of his habits, scarred of face 
and blinking of vision, unkempt, and sometimes unwashed. 
He fed noisily and laughed “ like a rhinoceros,” yet he con- 
sidered himself a very polite man, “ well-bred to a degree of 
needless scrupulosity,” He was never rough or overbearing 
to the weak and helpless ; was unspeakably good to the poor, 
