criterion upon which he formed his judgement of others, we may be absolutely certain, both from his writings and his conversation, that his reading was very extensive. Dr. Adam Smith, than whom few were better judges on this subject, once observed to me, that "Johnson knew more books than any man alive." He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end. He had, from the irritability of his constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read or wrote. A certain apprehension arising from novelty, made him write his first exercise at College twice over; but he never took that trouble with any other composition; and we shall see that his most excellent works were struck off at a heat, with rapid exertion. Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, "Was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicsome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life." But this is a stri king proof of the fallacy of appearances, and how little any of us know of the real internal state even of those whom we see most fre quently; for the truth is, that he was then depressed by poverty, and irritated by dis ease. When I mentioned to him this account as given me by Dr. Adams, he said, “Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. Iva miserably poor, and I thought to fighty way by my literature and my wit; sols regarded all power and all authority." The Bishop of Dromore observes a letter to me, "The pleasure he took invax. ing the tutors and fellows has been often mentioned. But I have heard him say, what ought to be recorded to the honor of the present venerable master of that College, the Reverend William Adams, D.D. who was then very young, and one of the junior fellows, that the mild but judi cious expostulations of this worthy mat whose virtue awed him, and whose learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself, though I fear (said he) I was to proud to own it.' ་ Yet he appears, from his early notes or memorandums in my possession, to have at various times attempted, or at least planned, a methodical course of study, according to computation of which he was all his life fond, as it fixed his attention steadily upon something without, and prevented his mind from preying upon itself. Thus I find in his hand-writing the number of lines in each of two of Euripides' Tragedies, of the Georgics of Virgil, of the first six books of the Eneid, of Horace's Art of Poetry, of "I have heard from some of his conten. three of the books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, poraries that he was generally seen loung of some parts of Theocritus, and of the ing at the College-gate, with a circle of tenth Satire of Juvenal; and a table, shew-young students round him, whom he was ing at the rate of various numbers a day (I entertaining with wit, and keeping from suppose verses to be read,) what would be, their studies, if not spiriting them up in each case, the total amount in a week, rebellion against the college discipline, month, and year. which in his maturer years he so much ex tolled." No man had a more ardent love of literature, or a higher respect for it, than Johnson. His apartment in Pembroke College was that upon the second floor over the gateway. The enthusiast of learning will ever contemplate it with veneration. One day, while he was sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Panting, then master of the College, whom he called "a fine jacobite fellow,' overheard him uttering this soliloquy in his strong emphatic voice: "Well, I have a mind to see what is done in other places of learning. I'll go and visit the Universities abroad. I'll go to France and Italy. I'll go to Padua.---And I'll mind my business. For an Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads." [He told Dr. Burney, that he never wrote any of his works that were printed, twice over. Dr. Burney's wonder at seeing several pages of his "Lives of the Poets," in Manuscript, with scarce a blot or erasure, drew this observation from him. M.] + I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnson confirmed it. Bramston, in his "Man of Taste," has the same thought: "Sure, of all blockheads, scholars are the worst." [Johnson s meaning, however, is, that a scholar who is a blockhead, must be the worst of all blockheads, because he is without excuse. But Bramston, in the to He very early began to attempt keeping notes or memorandums, by way of a diary of his life. I find, in a parcel of loose leaves, the following spirited resolution to contend against his natural indolence: “Oct. 1718 Desidiæ valedixi; sirenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus, - I bid fare well to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to her syren strains." I have also in my possession a few leaves of another Libellus or little book, entitled ANNALES, in which some of the early particulars his history are registered in Latin. of close I do not find that he formed any intimacies with his fellow-collegians. But Dr. Adams told me, that he contracted a love and regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last. A short time before his death he sent to that College a present of all his works, to be deposited in their li brary; and he had thoughts of leaving to it his house at Lichfield; but his friends who were about him, very properly dissuaded him from it, and he bequeathed it to some assumed character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains, that all scholars are blockheads on account of their scho larship. J. B.---0.1 1 wearing his miserable shattered shoes, and when new ones were offered him, rejected them as an unsuitable indulgence. poor relations. He took pleasure in boasting of the many eminent men who had been educated at Pembroke. In this list are found the names of Mr. Hawkins, the The res angusta domi prevented him from Poetry Professor, Mr. Shenstone, Sir Wil- having the advantage of a complete acadeliam Blackstone, and others; not forget-mical education. The friend to whom he had ting the celebrated popular preacher, Mr. trusted for support had deceived him. His George Whitefield, of whom, though Dr. debts in College, though not great, were Johnson did not think very highly, it must increasing; and his scanty remittances from be acknowledged that his eloquence was Lichfield, which had all along been made powerful, his views pious and charitable, his with great difficulty, could be supplied no A. assiduity almost incredible; and that, since longer, his father having fallen into a state his death, the integrity of his character of insolvency. Compelled, therefore, by irhas been fully vindicated. Being himself resistible necessity, he left the College in a poet, Johnson was peculiarly happy in autumn, 1731, without a degree, having been mentioning how many of the sons of Pem- a member of it little more than three years. broke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive triumph, "Sir, we are a nest of singing birds." He was not, however, blind to what he thought the defects of his own College: and I have, from the information of Dr. Taylor, a very strong instance of that rigid honesty which he ever inflexibly preserved. Taylor had obtained his father's consent to be entered of Pembroke, that he might be with his school-fellow, Johnson, with whom, though some years older than himself, he was very intimate. This would have been a great comfort to Johnson. But he fairly told Taylor that he could not, in conscience, suffer him to enter where he knew he could not have an able tutor. He then made inquiry all round the University, and having found that Mr. Bateman, of Christ Church, was the tutor of highest reputation, Taylor was entered of that College. Mr. Bateman's lectures were so excellent, that Johnson used to come and get them at second-hand from Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme, that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared through them, he saw that this humiliating circumstance was perceived by the Christ-Church men, and he came no more. He was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation. How must we feel, when we read such an anecdote of Samuel Johnson! His spirited refusal of an eleemosynary supply of shoes arose, no doubt, from a proper pride. But, considering his ascetic disposition at times, as acknowledged by himself in his Meditations, and the exagge rations with which some have treated the peculiarities of his character, I should not wonder to hear it ascribed to a principle of superstitious mortification; as we are told by Tursellinus, in his Life of St. Ignatius Loyola, that this intrepid founder of the order of Jesuits, when he arrived at Goa, after having made a severe pilgrimage through the eastern deserts, persisted in See Nash's History of Worcestershire, Vol. I. p. 529. Dr. Adams, the worthy and respectable master of Pembroke College, has generally had the reputation of being Johnson's tutor. The fact, however, is, that in 1731, Mr. Jorden quitted the College, and his pupils were transferred to Dr. Adams; so that had Johnson returned, Dr. Adams would have been his tutor. It is to be wished, that this connexion had taken place. His equal temper, mild disposition, and politeness of manners, might have insensibly softened the harshness of Johnson, and infused into him those more delicate charities, those petites morales, in which, it must be confessed, our great moralist was more deficient than his best friends could fully justify. Dr. Adams paid Johnson this high compliment. He said to me at Oxford, in 1776, "I was his nominal tutor; but he was above my mark." When I repeated it to Johnson, his eyes flashed with grateful satisfaction, and he exclaimed, "That was liberal and noble." And now (I had almost said poor) Samuel Johnson returned to his native city, destitute, and not knowing how he should gain even a decent livelihood. His father's misfortunes in trade rendered him unable to support his son; and for some time there appeared no means by which he could maintain himself. In the December of this year, his father died. The state of poverty in which he died, appears from a note in one of Johnson's little diaries of the following year, which strongly displays his spirit and virtuous dignity of mind." 1732, Julii 15. Undecim aureos deposui, quo die quicquid ante matris funus (quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperari licet, viginti scilicet libris, accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. Interea, nep aupertate vires animi languescant, nec in flagitia egestas abigat, cavendum.-I laid by eleven guineas on this day, when I received twenty pounds, being all that I have reason to hope for out of my father's effects, previous to the death of my mother; an event which I pray God may be very remote. I now therefore see that I must make my own fortune. Meanwhile, let me take care that the powers of my mind be not debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act." Johnson was so far fortunate, that the respectable character of his parents, and his own merit, had, from his earliest years, secured him a kind reception in the best families at Lichfield. Among these I can mention Mr. Howard, Dr. Swinfen, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Levett, Captain Garrick, father of the great ornament of the British stage; but, above all, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court at Lichfield, whose character, long after his decease, Dr. Johnson has, in his life of Edmund Smith, thus drawn in the glowing colours of gratitude: "Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself in the remembrance. I knew him very early; he was one of the first friends that literature procured me, and I hope, that at least my gratitude made me worthy of his notice. "He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy, yet he never received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart. I honoured him, and he en- | dured me. "He had mingled with the gay world, without exemption from its vices or its follies; but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind. His belief of revelation was unshaken; his learning preserved his principles; he grew first regular, and then pious. "His studies had been so various, that I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find. Such was his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication, that it may be doubted whether a day now passes, in which I have not some advantage from his friendship. "At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with companions such as are not often found-with one who has lengthened, and one who has gladdened, life; with Dr. James, whose skill in physic will be long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have gratified with this character of our common friend. But what are the hopes of man? I am disappointed by that stroke of death, Mr. Warton informs me, "that this early friend of Johnson was entered a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged 17, in 1698; and is the author of many Latin verse translations in the Gentleman's Magazine. One of them is a translation of · My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent,""&c. He died August 3, 1751, and a monument to his memory has been erected in the cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward, one of the prebendaries. which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harm. less pleasure." In these families he passed much time in his early years. In most of them, he was in the company of ladies, particularly at Mr. Walmsley's, whose wife and sisters-in-law, of the name of Aston, and daughters of a baronet, were remarkable for good breeding; so that the notion which has been industriously circulated and believed, that he never was in good company till late in life, and con. sequently had been confirmed in coarse and ferocious manners by long habits, is wholly without foundation. Some of the ladies have assured me, they recollected him well when a young man, as distinguished for his complaisance. And that his politeness was not merely occasional and temporary, or confined to the circles of Lichfield, is ascertained by the testimony of a lady, who, in a paper with which I have been favoured by a daughter of his intimate friend and physician, Dr. Lawrence, thus describes Dr. Johnson some years afterward: "As the particulars of the former part of Dr. Johnson's life do not seem to be very accurately known, a lady hopes that the following information may not be unacceptable. She remembers Dr. Johnson on a visit to Dr. Taylor, at Ashbourn, sometime between the end of the year 37, and the middle of the year 40; she rather thinks it to have been after he and his wife were removed to London. During his stay at Ashbourn, he made frequent visits to Mr. Meynell, at Bradley, where his company was much desired by the ladies of the family, who were, perhaps, in point of elegance and accomplishments, inferior to few of those with whom he was afterward acquainted. Mr. Meynell's eldest daughter was afterward married to Mr. Fitzherbert, father to Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, lately minister to the court of Russia. Of her, Dr. Johnson said, in Dr. Lawrence's study, that she had the best understanding he ever met with in any human being. At Mr. Meynell's he also commenced that friendship with Mrs. Hill Boothby, sister to the present Sir Brook Boothby, which continued till her death. The young woman whom he used to call Molly Aston,+ was sister to Sir Themas Aston, and daughter to a baronet; she was also sister to the wife of his friend, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley. Besides his intimacy The words of Sir John Hawkins, p. 316. [Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in January 1724-5, left one son, named Thomas also, and eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine married Johnson's friend, the Hon. Henry Hervey; Margaret, Gilbert Walmsley. Another of these ladies married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell. Mary, or Molly Aston, as she was usually called, became the wife of Captain Brodie of the Navy. Another sister, who was unmarried, was living at Lichfield in 1776. M.] ever uneasiness he may have endured, he laid the foundation of much future eminence by application to his studies. with the above mentioned persons, who were | linquished a situation which all his life surely people of rank and education, while afterward he recollected with the strongest he was yet at Lichfield he used to be fre- aversion, and even a degree of horror. quently at the house of Dr. Swinfen, a gen-But it is probable that at this period, whattleman of very ancient family in Staffordshire, from which, after the death of his eldest brother, he inherited a good estate. He was, besides, a physician of very extensive practice; but for want of due attention to the management of his domestic concerns, left a very large family in indigence. One of his daughters, Mrs. Desmoulins, afterward found an asylum in the house of her old friend, whose doors were always open to the unfortunate, and who well observed the precept of the Gospel, for he was kind to the unthankful and to the evil.'" In the forlorn state of his circumstances, he accepted of an offer to be employed as usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire, to which it appears, from one of his little fragments of a diary, that he went on foot, on the 16th of July.—“ Julii | 16, Bosvortiam pedes petii." But it is not true, as has been erroneously related, that he was assistant to the famous Anthony Blackwall, whose ment has been honoured by the testimony of Bishop Hurd, who was his scholar; for Mr. Blackwall died on the 8th of April, 1730,† more than a year before Johnson left the University. This employment was very irksome to him in every respect, and he complained grievously of it in his letters to his friend, | Mr. Hector, who was now settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. The letters are lost; but Mr. Hector recollects his writing "that the poet had described the dull sameness of his existence in these words, Vitam continet una dies' (one day contains the whole of my life;) that it was unvaried as the note of the cuckoo; and that he did not know whether it was more disagreeable for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules." His general aversion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school, in whose house, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of domestic chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness; and, after suffering for a few months such complicated misery, he re [There is here (as Mr. James Boswell observes to me) a slight inaccuracy. Bishop Hurd, in the Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to his Commentary on Horace's Art of Poetry, &c. does not praise Blackwall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth, head-master of the grammar-school at Brewood, in Staffordshire, who had himself been bred under Blackwall. See vol. iv. near the end, where, from the information of Mr. John Nichols, Johnson is said to have applied in 1736 to Mr. Budworth, to be received by him as an assistant in his school in Staffordshire. M.] See Gent. Mag. Dec. 1784, p. 957. It appears from a letter of Johnson's to a friend which I have read, dated Lichfield, July 27, 1732, that he had left Sir Wolstan Dixie's house, recently before that letter was written. He then had hopes of succeed Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to pass some time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of Mr. Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was the first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to Johnson, whom he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade, by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the assistance of his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical Essay printed in the newspaper, of which Warren was proprietor. After very diligent inquiry, I have not been able to recover those early specimens of that particular mode of writing by which Johnson afterward so greatly distinguished himself. He continued to live as Mr. Hector's guest for about six months, and then hired lodgings in another part of the town,§ finding himself as well situated at Birmingham as he supposed he could be any where, while he had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of subsistence. He made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterward married, and Mr. Taylor, who, by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his success in trade, acquired an immense fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old schoolfellow and intimate friend, was Johnson's chief inducement to continue here. In what manner he employed his pen at this period, or whether he derived from it any pecuniary advantage, I have not been able to ascertain. He probably got a little money from Mr. Warren; and we are certain, that he executed here one piece of literary labour, of which Mr. Hector has favoured me with a minute account. Having mentioned that he had read at Pembroke College a Voyage to Abyssinia, by Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit, and that he thought an abridgement and translation of it from the French into English might be a useful and profitable publication, Mr. Warren and Mr. Hector joined in urging him to undertake it. He accordingly agreed; and the book not being to be found in Birmingham, he borrowed it of Pembroke College. A part of the work being very soon done, one Osborn, who was Mr. Warren's printer, ing either as master or usher, in the school of Ashburne. M.] [In June, 1733, Sir John Hawkins states, from one of Johnson's diaries, that he lodged in Birmingham, at the house of a person named Jarvis, probably a relation of Mrs Porter, whom he afterwards married. M. D was set to work with what was ready, and | Johnson engaged to supply the press with copy as it should be wanted; but his constitutional indolence soon prevailed, and the work was at a stand. Mr. Hector, who knew that a motive of humanity would be the most prevailing argument with his friend, went to Johnson, and represented to him, that the printer could have no other employment till this undertaking was finished, and that the poor man and his family were suffering. Johnson upon this exerted the powers of his mind, though his body was relaxed. He lay in bed with the book, which was a quarto, before him, and dictated while Hector wrote. Mr. Hector carried the sheets to the press, and corrected almost all the proof sheets, very few of which were even seen by Johnson. In this manner, with the aid of Mr. Hector's active friendship, the book was completed, and was published in 1735, with London upon the titlepage, though it was in reality printed at Birmingham, a device too common with provincial publishers. For this work, he had from Mr. Warren only the sum of five guineas. This being the first prose work of Johnson, it is a curious object of inquiry how much may be traced in it of that style which marks his subsequent writings with so happy a union of force, vivacity, and perspicuity. I have perused the book with this view, and have found that here, as I believe in every other translation, there is in the work itself no vestige of the translator's own style; for the language of translation, being adapted to the thoughts of another person, insensibly follows their cast, and as it were runs into a mould that is ready prepared. begins to appear; and though use had n yet taught his wing a permanent and equ ble flight, there are parts of it which exhile his best manner in full vigour. I had one the pleasure of examining it with Mr. Edmund Burke, who confirmed me in this opinion by his superior critical sagacity and was, I remember, much delighted with the following specimen : "The Portuguese traveller, contrary te the general vein of his countrymen, s amused his reader with no romantic absur dity, or incredible fictions; whatever he relates, whether true or not, is at least bable; and he who tells nothing exceed ing the bounds of probability, has a right demand that they should believe him cannot contradict him. “He appears, by his modest and unafe!ed narration, to have described things as be saw them, to have copied nature from the life, and to have consulted his senses, t his imagination. He meets with no bas lisks that destroy with their eyes; his cr codiles devour their prey without tears an his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening the neighbouring inhabitants. "The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, blest with spontaneous fecundity; no per petual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; are the nations here described either deva of all sense of humanity, or consummate all private or social virtues. Here are Hottentots without religious policy or art culate language; no Chinese perfectly p lite, and completely skilled in all sciences: he will discover, what will always be disco vered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a cu test of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distr butions, but has balanced, in most co tries, their particular inconveniences particular favours.” Thus, for instance, taking the first sentence that occurs at the opening of the book, p. 4. "I lived here above a year, and completed my studies in divinity; in which time some letters were received from the fathers of Ethiopia, with an account that Sultan Segned, emperor of Abyssinia, was Here we have an early example of the converted to the Church of Rome; that brilliant and energetic expression, which many of his subjects had followed his exam- upon innumerable occasions in his subse ple; and that there was a great want of mis-quent life, justly impressed the world with sionaries to improve these prosperous be- the highest admiration. ginnings. Every body was very desirous of seconding the zeal of our fathers, and of sending them the assistance they requested; to which we were the more encouraged, because the emperor's letter informed our provincial, that we might easily enter his dominions by the way of Dancala; but, unhappily, the secretary wrote Geila for Dancala, which cost two of our fathers their lives." Every one acquainted with Johnson's manner will be sensible that there is nothing of it here; but that this sentence might have been composed by any other man. But, in the Preface, the Johnsonian style Nor can any one, conversant with the writings of Johnson, fail to discern his hand in this passage of the Dedication to John Warren, Esq. of Pembrokeshire, though it is ascribed to Warren, the bookseller. generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity; nor is that curiosity ever more agreeably or usefully employed than in examining the laws and customs of foreign nations. I hope, therefore, the pre sent I now presume to make, will not be thought improper; which, however, it is *See Rambler, No. 103. |