While learning Latin and studying literature under his cousin Ford around 1726, he also wrote a number of English poems. At Pembroke, some of his work helped to promote his reputation in the academic community, notably a translation of Pope's already Latinate Messiah into Latin verse, prepared as a college exercise at Christmas 1729. This became Johnson's first published piece when it appeared in a miscellany two years later, and it allegedly impressed Pope himself. When SJ left Oxford in 1729, he had mounting debts and the pressure of his father's failing business, and severe 'melancholia'. He was unemployed of and on and struggling financially. His first sustained literary work A Voyage to Abyssinia earned Johnson 5 guineas from Thomas Warren, a Birmingham bookseller, although the actual publishers were members of the London trade. Throughout the early to mid 1730s, SJ married, seems to have spent all of his wife's fortune, and made a number of failed attempts at employment. When he left for London with Garrick in 1737, he claimed that he arrived with 2½d. in his pocket, while his young friend had only three halfpence. He began working for Cave and writing extensively for GM (including translations and political satires against Walpole). During the late 1730s Johnson's career was at last beginning to flourish, although he was unable to get Irene staged. He and his wife still had constant monetary problems and had to move around a lot around Fleet Street. Despite writing pamphlets and successful short biographies, he remained underemployed up until around 1745 when he considered entering the legal profession. His most famous and enduring work was his Dictionary (contracted 1746), for which he received 1500 guineas. During this time he finally established himself as a writer. Despite his blossoming career, he remained poor, and once in March 1756 Samuel Richardson came to his aid when he was arrested for a debt of about £5. His literary productivity slowed in the 1760s. His later years were marked by spurts of ill health, some travel with friends, and his famous prefaces to Lives, which he was contracted for for £200. He profited from the good relations he maintained with the London publishing world, having been born into a family of booksellers. The DNB ends by praising his legacy: "Johnson was arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history. His range as a writer is astonishing: he excelled in criticism, satire, biography, the moral essay, fiction, scholarly editing, travel writing, political pamphleteering, journalism, and lexicography. He produced distinguished poetry both in English and in Latin. Apart from this, he composed noteworthy sermons, impressive prayers, a moving diary, and superb letters." [He has an insane amount of publications in the ESTC, I included only the ones he wrote, though he wrote prefaces for many other works. Many of his publications went through multiple editions.]