ringleader. Much was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly
distinguished by abilities and acquirements. He had early made
himself known by turning Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. The
style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly Virgilian; but the
translation found many admirers, and was read with pleasure by
Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course
of things, have become a Bachelor of Arts: but he was at the end
of his resources. Those promises of support on which he had
relied had not been kept. His family could do nothing for him.
His debts to Oxford tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than
he could pay. In the autumn of 1731, he was under the necessity
of quitting the university without a degree. In the following
winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance; and of
that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the support of
his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to no
more than twenty pounds.

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard
struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no
aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound
body and an unsound mind. Before the young man left the
university, his hereditary malady had broken forth in a
singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable hypochondriac.
He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or at least
not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange
than his have often been thought grounds sufficient for absolving
felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures,
his mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people