written by him in many of her books of devotion.

Mrs. Johnson had one other recommendation--a fortune, namely, of
£800--little enough, even then, as a provision for the support of the
married pair, but enough to help Johnson to make a fresh start. In 1736,
there appeared an advertisement in the _Gentleman's Magazine_. "At
Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and
taught the Latin and Greek languages by Samuel Johnson." If, as seems
probable, Mrs. Johnson's money supplied the funds for this venture, it
was an unlucky speculation.

Johnson was not fitted to be a pedagogue. Success in that profession
implies skill in the management of pupils, but perhaps still more
decidedly in the management of parents. Johnson had little
qualifications in either way. As a teacher he would probably have been
alternately despotic and over-indulgent; and, on the other hand, at a
single glance the rough Dominie Sampson would be enough to frighten the
ordinary parent off his premises. Very few pupils came, and they seem to
have profited little, if a story as told of two of his pupils refers to
this time. After some months of instruction in English history, he asked
them who had destroyed the monasteries? One of them gave no answer; the
other replied "Jesus Christ." Johnson, however, could boast of one
eminent pupil in David Garrick, though, by Garrick's account, his master
was of little service except as affording an excellent mark for his
early powers of ridicule. The school, or "academy," failed after a year
and a half; and Johnson, once more at a loss for employment, resolved to
try the great experiment, made so often and so often unsuccessfully. He
left Lichfield to seek his fortune in London. Garrick accompanied him,
and the two brought a common letter of introduction to the master of an
academy from Gilbert Walmsley, registrar of the Prerogative Court in