GREAT MEN'S BODIES
right hand holds a representation of the old crab-tree walking-stick which Franklin bequeathed to Washington with such honorable mention in his last will." The form is taken from the original bust by Houdon now in the Boston Athenæum.
SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709–1784)
Born at Lichfield, England; two years in his father's book-store. "At Oxford University he spent probably the most unhappy period of his unhappy life. Overpowered by debts, difficulties, and religious doubts, he became a prey to the morbid melancholy of his constitution. Poverty prevented him from taking his degree." His father dying insolvent, he became usher of a school at Bosworth, then worked for a bookseller at Birmingham; became acquainted with Garrick, and a contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine; then began to publish poems, satires, and to report Parliamentary debates. Wrote the life of Richard Savage, the Vanity of Human Wishes, and an imitation of the "Tenth Satire of Juvenal"; and conducted the Rambler for two years; then the Idler for two years; and in 1759 wrote Rasselas, to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral. Then he emerged from obscurity, and through Lord Bute obtained a pension of £300 a year. The next year met Boswell, whose life of Dr. Johnson is probably more imperishable than any of the Doctor's own writings; became intimate with Thrale; visited the Highlands with Boswell; then wrote his Lives of the Poets; was buried in Westminster Abbey.
A writer in Chambers's Cyclopædia says: "While struggling for a living, one publisher, noticing his burly frame, advised him to buy a porter's knot.… He was sometimes dinnerless; we hear of his walking round St. James's Square with Savage all one night for want of a lodging. But he bore all with a splendid courage. There is no more heroic figure in the history of our literature. Meanwhile, in spite of circumstances, he was becoming the foremost writer of his time."
"Johnson had a tall, well-formed, and massive figure, indicative of great physical strength, but made grotesque by a strange infirmity. Madame D'Arblay speaks
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