ture from the life ... consulted his senses, not his imagination," and he condemns the Portuguese and the Jesuits for trying to impose by force European domination on indigenous peoples, and justifying that force in the name of Christianity. The book had stirred up a heated controversy in Europe: Protestants maintained that the Ethiopian church was as legitimate a branch of Christianity as Roman Catholicism, perhaps even a purer one. Johnson makes it clear that he is on the Protestant side. His work is "by no means a translation, but an epitome": he does much skillful condensation and adaptation, often toning down the Catholic expressions in the text. His version runs to four hundred pages; for it young Johnson received five guineas (around two hundred dollars in present United States currency). While living in Birmingham, Johnson met the merchant Henry Porter and his wife Elizabeth, ne Jervis. Harry Porter died in September 1734, and on 9 July 1735 Johnson married his widow. Many eyebrows have been raised at this marriage between a penniless youth of twenty five and a widow of forty-five with three fatherless children (after the wedding the children went to live with other relatives). But Johnson always praised her intellect and her beauty, and she was evidently intelligent enough to recognize the quality of Johnson's mind; at her death eighteen years later, he was devastated. She brought with her some six hundred pounds from her marriage settlement, and with it Johnson opened a boarding school at Edial, close to Lichfield. It attracted only a few pupils, one of them being David Garrick. It soon clo...
