that he relinquished it, and, removing to Birmingham, became the guest
of his friend Mr. Hector, who was a chirurgeon in that town, and lodged
in the house of a bookseller; having remained with him about six months,
he hired lodgings for himself. By Mr. Hector he was stimulated, not
without some difficulty, to make a translation from the French, of
Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, for which he received no more than five
guineas from the bookseller, who, by an artifice not uncommon, printed
it at Birmingham, with the date of London in the title-page. To Mr.
Hector, therefore, is due the impulse which first made Johnson an
author. The motion being once given did not cease; for, having returned
to Lichfield in 1735, he sent forth in August proposals for printing by
subscription Politian's Latin Poems, with a Life of the Author, Notes,
and a History of Latin Poetry, from the age of Petrarch to that of
Politian. His reason for fixing on this era it is not easy to determine.
Mussato preceded Petrarch, the interval between Petrarch and Politian is
not particularly illustrated by excellence in Latin poetry; and Politian
was much surpassed in correctness and elegance, if not in genius, by
those who came after him--by Flaminio, Navagero, and Fracastorio. Yet in
the hands of Johnson, such a subject would not have been wanting in
instruction or entertainment. Such as were willing to subscribe, were
referred to his brother, Nathaniel Johnson, who had succeeded to his
father's business in Lichfield; but the design was dropped, for want of
a sufficient number of names to encourage it, a deficiency not much to
be wondered at, unless the inhabitants of provincial towns were more
learned in those days than at present.

In this year, he made another effort to obtain the means of subsistence
by an offer of his pen to Cave, the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine;
but the immediate result of the application is not known; nor in what
manner he supported himself till July 1736, when he married Elizabeth