2. SAMUEL JOHNSON (+1709-1784+), the great essayist and lexicographer, was born at Lichfield in the year 1709. His father was a bookseller; and it was in his father’s shop that Johnson acquired his habit of omnivorous reading, or rather devouring of books. The mistress of the dame’s school, to which he first went, declared him to be the best scholar she ever had. After a few years at the free grammar-school of Lichfield, and one year at Stourbridge, he went to Pembroke College, Oxford, at the age of nineteen. Here he did not confine himself to the studies of the place, but indulged in a wide range of miscellaneous reading. He was too poor to take a degree, and accordingly left Oxford without graduating. After acting for some time as a bookseller’s hack, he married a Mrs Porter of Birmingham-- a widow with £800. With this money he opened a boarding-school, or “academy” as he called it; but he had never more than three scholars-- the most famous of whom was the celebrated player, David Garrick. In 1737 he went up to London, and for the next quarter of a century struggled for a living by the aid of his pen. During the first ten years of his London life he wrote chiefly for the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine.’ In 1738 his +London+-- a poem in heroic metre-- appeared. In 1747 he began his famous +Dictionary+; it was completed in 1755; and the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of M.A. In 1749 he wrote another poem-- also in heroic metre-- the ‘Vanity of Human Wishes.’ In 1750 he had begun the periodical that raised his fame to its full height-- a periodical to which he gave the name of +The Rambler+. It appeared twice a-week; and Dr Johnson wrote every article in it for two years. In 1759 he published the short novel called +Rasselas+: it was written to defray the expenses of his mother’s funeral; and he wrote it “in the evenings of a week.” The year 1762 saw him with a pension from the Government of £300 a-year; and henceforth he was free from heavy hack-work and literary drudgery, and could give himself up to the largest enjoyment of that for which he cared most-- social conversation. He was the best talker of his time; and he knew everybody worth knowing-- Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon, the great painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and many other able men. In 1764 he founded the “Literary Club,” which still exists and meets in London. Oddly enough, although a prolific writer, it is to another person-- to Mr James Boswell, who first met him in 1763-- that he owes his greatest and most lasting fame. A much larger number of persons read +Boswell’s Life of Johnson+-- one of the most entertaining books in all literature-- than Johnson’s own works. Between the years 1779 and 1781 appeared his last and ablest work, +The Lives of the Poets+, which were written as prefaces to a collective edition of the English Poets, published by several London booksellers. He died in 1784.