On leaving the University, in 1731, the world was all before him. His
father died in the end of the year, and Johnson's whole immediate
inheritance was twenty pounds. Where was he to turn for daily bread?
Even in those days, most gates were barred with gold and opened but to
golden keys. The greatest chance for a poor man was probably through the
Church. The career of Warburton, who rose from a similar position to a
bishopric might have been rivalled by Johnson, and his connexions with
Lichfield might, one would suppose, have helped him to a start. It would
be easy to speculate upon causes which might have hindered such a
career. In later life, he more than once refused to take orders upon the
promise of a living. Johnson, as we know him, was a man of the world;
though a religious man of the world. He represents the secular rather
than the ecclesiastical type. So far as his mode of teaching goes, he is
rather a disciple of Socrates than of St. Paul or Wesley. According to
him, a "tavern-chair" was "the throne of human felicity," and supplied
a better arena than the pulpit for the utterance of his message to
mankind. And, though his external circumstances doubtless determined his
method, there was much in his character which made it congenial.
Johnson's religious emotions were such as to make habitual reserve
almost a sanitary necessity. They were deeply coloured by his
constitutional melancholy. Fear of death and hell were prominent in his
personal creed. To trade upon his feelings like a charlatan would have
been abhorrent to his masculine character; and to give them full and
frequent utterance like a genuine teacher of mankind would have been to
imperil his sanity. If he had gone through the excitement of a Methodist
conversion, he would probably have ended his days in a madhouse.

Such considerations, however, were not, one may guess, distinctly
present to Johnson himself; and the offer of a college fellowship or of