'What should we speak of
When we are old as you? when we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December, how
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.'
With his pension his wanderings at once began. His friendship with the Thrales gave them a still wider range. His curiosity, which in itself was always eager, was checked in his more prosperous circumstances by his years, his natural unwillingness at any one moment to make an effort, and by the want of travelling companions who were animated by a spirit of inquiry and of enterprise equal to his own. He did indeed travel much more than is commonly thought, and was far less frequently to be seen rolling along Fleet-street or stemming the full tide of human existence at Charing Cross than his biographers would have us believe.
The following table, imperfect though it must necessarily be, shows how large a part of his life he passed outside 'the first turnpike-gate,' and beyond the smoke of London:—
1709-1736. The first twenty-seven years of his life he spent in small country towns or villages—Lichfield, Stourbridge, Oxford, Market-Bosworth, Birmingham. So late as 1781 Lichfield did not contain 4,000 inhabitants (Harwood's History of Lichfield, p. 380); eight years later it was reckoned that a little over 8,000 people dwelt in Oxford (Parker's Early History of Oxford, ed. 1885, p. 229). In 1732 or 1733 Birmingham, when Johnson first went to live there, had not, I suppose, a population of 10,000. Its growth was wonderfully rapid. Between 1770 and 1797 its inhabitants increased from 30,000 to nearly 80,000 (Birmingham Directory for 1780, p. xx, and A Brief History of Birmingham, p. 8).
1736-7. The first eighteen months of his married life he lived quite in the country at Edial, two miles from Lichfield. Ante, i. 97.
1737. He was twenty-eight years old when he removed to London. Ante, i. 110.
1739. He paid a visit to Appleby in Leicestershire and to Ashbourn. Ante, i. 82, 133 note 1.
1754. Oxford. July and August, about five weeks. Ante, i. 270, note 5.
1759. Oxford. July, length of visit not mentioned. Ante, i. 347.
1761-2. Lichfield. Winter, a visit of five days. Ante, i. 370.