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We thus know everything about
Johnson, as we do not know about any other literary man, and this
knowledge, due to his biographer, is at least one of the elements of
Johnson's immense reputation.
He was born at Lichfield on the 18th of September, 1709. His father was a
bookseller; and after having had a certain amount of knowledge "well
beaten into him" by Mr. Hunter, young Johnson was for two years an
assistant in his father's shop. But such was his aptitude for learning,
that he was sent in 1728 to Pembroke College, Oxford. His youth was not a
happy one: he was afflicted with scrofula, "which disfigured a countenance
naturally well formed, and hurt his visual nerves so much that he did not
see at all with one of his eyes." He had a morbid melancholy,--fits of
dejection which made his life miserable. He was poor; and when, in 1731,
his father died insolvent, he was obliged to leave the university without
a degree. After fruitless attempts to establish a school, he married, in
1736, Mrs. Porter, a widow, who had L800.


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