in thirty octavo sheets, price five shillings.  It is to be regretted that this project failed for want of encouragement.  Johnson, it seems, differed from Boileau, Voltaire, and D’Alembert, who had taken upon them to proscribe all modern efforts to write with elegance in a dead language.  For a decision pronounced in so high a tone, no good reason can be assigned.  The interests of learning require, that the diction of Greece and Rome should be cultivated with care; and he who can write a language with correctness, will be most likely to understand its idiom, its grammar, and its peculiar graces of style.  What man of taste would willingly forego the pleasure of reading Vida, Fracastorius, Sannazaro, Strada, and others, down to the late elegant productions of bishop Lowth?  The history which Johnson proposed to himself would, beyond all question, have been a valuable addition to the history of letters; but his project failed.  His next expedient was to offer his assistance to Cave, the original projector of the Gentleman’s Magazine.  For this purpose he sent his proposals in a letter, offering, on reasonable terms, occasionally to fill some pages with poems and inscriptions, never printed before; with fugitive pieces that deserved to be revived, and critical remarks on authors, ancient and modern.  Cave agreed to retain him as a correspondent and contributor to the magazine.  What the conditions were cannot now be known; but, certainly, they were not sufficient to hinder Johnson from casting his eyes about him in quest of other employment.  Accordingly, in 1735, he made overtures to the reverend Mr. Budworth, master of a grammar school at Brerewood, in Staffordshire, to become his assistant.  This proposition did not succeed.  Mr. Budworth apprehended, that the involuntary motions, to which Johnson’s nerves were subject, might make him an object of ridicule with his scholars, and, by consequence, lessen their respect for their master.  Another mode of advancing himself presented itself about this time.  Mrs. Porter, the widow of a mercer in Birmingham, admired his talents.  It is said, that she had about eight hundred pounds; and that sum, to a person in Johnson’s circumstances, was an affluent fortune.  A marriage took place; and, to turn his wife’s money to the best advantage, he projected the scheme of an academy for education.  Gilbert Walmsley, at that time, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the bishop of Lichfield, was distinguished by his erudition, and the politeness of his manners.  He was the friend of Johnson, and, by his weight and influence, endeavoured to promote his interest.  The celebrated Garrick, whose father, captain Garrick, lived at Lichfield, was placed in the new seminary of education by that gentleman’s advice.—­Garrick was then about eighteen years old.  An accession of seven or eight pupils was the most that could be obtained, though notice was given by a public advertisement[g], that at Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by Samuel Johnson.