He had a love and respect for Jorden, not for his literature, but for his worth. "Whenever (said he) a young man becomes Jorden's pupil, he becomes his son." was not, it seems, a man of such abilities as | language, would probably have produced we should conceive requisite for the instruc- something sublime upon the Gunpowder tor of Samuel Johnson, who [would Plot. To apologise for his neglect, he gave Hak oftener risk the payment of a small in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, j. 2. fine than attend his lectures; nor was containing a common thought: "that the he studious to conceal the reason of his ab- Muse had come to him in his sleep, and sence. Upon occasion of one such imposi- whispered, that it did not become him to tion, he said to Jorden, "Sir, you have write on such subjects as politics; he should sconced me two-pence for non-attendance confine himself to humbler themes:" but at a lecture not worth a penny ."] He the versification was truly Virgilian. gave me the following account of him: "He was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instructions. Indeed, I did not attend him much. The first day after I came to col- Having given such a specimen of his polege, I waited upon him, and then staid etical powers, he was asked by Mr. Jorden, away four. On the sixth, Mr. Jorden ask- to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, ed me why I had not attended. I answered as a Christmas exercise 3. He performed it I had been sliding in Christ-church mea-with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterdow. And this I said with as much non-ly a manner, that he obtained great applause chalance as I am now talking to you. I from it, which ever after kept him high in had no notion that I was wrong or the estimation of his college, and, indeed, Oxford, irreverent to my tutor." BOSWELL. of all the university. 1776. "That, sir, was great fortitude of mind." JOHNSON. "No, sir; stark 20 Mar. insensibility 2." Hawk p. 13. It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of strong appro bation. [The poem having been [When he told this anecdote to shown to him by a son of Dr. ArMrs. Piozzi, he laughed very heart-buthnot, then a gentleman comily at the recollection of his own in- moner of Christ-church, was read, and resolence, and said they endured it from him turned with this encomium: "The writer with wonderful acquiescence, and a gentle- of this poem will leave it a question for posnews that, whenever he thought of it, as- terity, whether his or mine be the original."] tonished himself. He said, too, that when Dr. Taylor told me, that it was first printed he made his first declamation, he wrote for old Mr. Johnson, without the knowledge over but one copy, and that coarsely; and of his son, who was very angry when he having given it into the hand of the tutor heard of it. A Miscellany of Poems collectwho stood to receive it as he passed, was ed by a person of the name of Husbands 4, obliged to begin by chance and continue on was published at Oxford in 1731. In that how he could, for he had got but little of Miscellany, Johnson's Translation of the it by heart; so, fairly trusting to his pres- Messiah appeared, with this modest motto ent powers for immediate supply, he finish- from Scaliger's Poeticks, "Ex alieno ingened by adding astonishment to the applause io Poeta, ex suo tantum versificator." of all who knew how little was owing to study. A prodigious risk, however, said some one: "Not at all (exclaims Johnson): no man, I suppose, leaps at once into deep water who does not know how to swim."] The fifth of November was at that time kept with great solemnity at Pembroke College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were required. Johnson neglected to perform his, which is much to be regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of Mr. Boswell either did not consult Dr. Adams, or did not remember accurately what the Dertor must have told him on these points.-ED.] [It has been thought worth while to preserve the anecdote, as an early specimen of the antithecal style of Johnson's conversation.---ED.] It ought to be remembered, that Dr. Johnson was apt, in his literary as well as moral exercises, to overcharge his defects. Dr. Adams informed me, that he attended his tutor's lectures, and also the lectures in the College Hall, very regularly. -BOSWELL. I am not ignorant that critical objections have been made to this and other specimens of Johnson's Latin poetry. I acknowledge myself not competent to decide on a question of such extreme nicety. But I am satisfied with the just and discriminative eulogy pronounced upon it by my friend Mr. Courtenay, [in his Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson.] "And with like ease, his vivid lines assume [If Dr. Hall's inferences from the dates in the college books be correct, this must have been the Christmas immediately following his entry into college.-ED.] [John Husbands, the editor of this Miscellany, was a cotemporary of Johnson at Pembroke College, having been admitted a fellow and A. M. in 1728.-HALL.] From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase, Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands, and inefficient, that he could not disti the hour upon the town-clock. Johnson, upon the first violent att this disorder, strove to overcome it b ble exertions 4. He frequently wa Birmingham and back again, and trie other expedients, but all in vain. pression concerning it to me was, not then know how to manage it. distress became so intolerable, that plied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Li his godfather 5, and put into his state of his case, written in Latin Swinfen was so much struck with traordinary acuteness, research, a quence of this paper, that in his zea godson he showed it to several peopl daughter, Mrs. Desmoulins, who wa years humanely supported in Dr. Jo house in London, told me, that u discovering that Dr. Swinfen had co cated his case, he was so much o that he was never afterwards fully re to him. He indeed had good reas offended; for though Dr Swinfen's was good, he inconsiderately betraye ter deeply interesting and of great d which had been intrusted to him i dence; and exposed a complaint of hi friend and patient, which in the cial opinion of the generality of ma attended with contempt and disgra The "morbid melancholy," which was lurking in his constitution, and to which we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to regular life, which, at a very early period, marked his character, gathered such strength in his twentieth year, as to afflict him in a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 17292, he felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful influence. How wonderful, how unsearchable are the ways of GOD! Johnson, who was blest with all the powers of genius and understanding in a degree far above the ordinary state of human nature, was at the same time visited with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire experience, will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was, in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He told Mr. Paradise 3 that he was sometimes so languided a distich in ancient Greek, which ha [This refers to a Latin ode addressed to Mrs. Thrale from the Isle of Skie, which will be mentioned in its proper place, under 6th September, 1773.-ED.] 2 [It seems, as Dr. Hall suggests, probable, that this is a mistake for 1730: Johnson appears to have remained in college during the vacation of 1729, and we have no trace of him in the year 1730, during which he was, possibly, labouring under this malady, and, on that account, absent from college.-ED.] 3 [John Paradise, Esq. D. C. L. of Oxford, and F. R. S., was of Greek extraction, the son of the English Consul at Salonica, where he was born: he was educated at Padua, but resided the greater But let not little men triump knowing that Johnson was an HY DRIACK, was subject to what the lear losophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne ha treated under the title of "The Malady." Though he suffered from it, he was not therefore d The powers of his great mind n part of his life in London; in the litera of which he was generally known and teemed. He seems to have been a good scholar, and certainly spoke most Europ guages (amongst the rest, modern Greek ish) with great facility. This unusual ac ment was probably the cause of his intin Sir William Jones, to whom we learn mouth's Life of Jones, p. 221.) that h Mr gular honour of being copied by the ha celebrated Duchess of Devonshire. became intimate with Johnson in the 1 tion of the Doctor's life; was a mem Essex-street club; and attended his fund Paradise died, at his house in TitchfieldDec. 1795.-ED.] 4 [It appears, from his own account ther (ante, p. 10), that he thought ex change of place alleviated this disease, inherited from him. It seems that he d his own mind, connect this disease with ula, which he derived, as he thought, mother, or, as Dr. Swinfen believed, nurse.-ED.] 5 [See ante, p. 15.-ED.] Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt in its full extent, but many 3 have experienced in a lighter degree, Johnson, in his writings, and in his conversation, never failed to display all the varieties of intellectual excellence. In his march through this world to a better, his mind still appeared grand and brilliant, and impressed all around him with the truth of Virgil's noble sentiment— "Igneus est ollis vigor et cælestis origo." troubled, and their full exercise suspended at times; but the mind itself was ever entire. As a proof of this, it is only necessary to consider, that when he was at the very worst, he composed that state of his own case, which showed an uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of julgement. I am aware that he himself was too ready to call such a complaint by the name of madness; in conformity with which notion, he has traced its gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the chapters of his RASSELAS. But there is sure- The history of his mind as to religion is ly a clear distinction between a disorder an important article. I have mentioned the which affects only the imagination and spir- early impressions made upon his tender imits, while the judgement is sound, and a disor- agination by his mother, who continued her der by which the judgement itself is im- pious cares with assiduity, but, in his opipaired. This distinction was made to me nion, not with judgement. "Sunday (said by the late Professor Gaubius of Leyden, he) was a heavy day to me when I was a physician to the Prince of Orange, in a con- boy. My mother confined me on that day, versation which I had with him several and made me read The Whole Duty of years ago, and he expanded it thus: "If Man,' from a great part of which I could (said he) a man tell me that he is grievous- derive no instruction. When, for instance, ly disturbed, for that he imagines he sees a I had read the chapter on theft, which from ruffian coming against him with a drawn my infancy I had been taught was wrong, sword, though at the same time he is con- I was no more convinced that theft was scious it is a delusion, I pronounce him to wrong than before; so there was no acceshave a disordered imagination; but if a mansion of knowledge. A boy should be introtell me that he sees this, and in consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be mad." duced to such books, by having his attention directed to the arrangement, to the style, and other excellencies of composition; that the mind being thus engaged by an amusing variety of objects may not grow weary. It is a common effect of low spirits or melancholy, to make those who are afflicted with it imagine that they are actually sufferung those evils which happen to be most He communicated to me the following strongly presented to their minds. Some particulars upon the subject of his religious have fancied themselves to be deprived of progress. "I fell into an inattention to rethe use of their limbs, some to labour under ligion, or an indifference about it, in my arute diseases, others to be in extreme pov-ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in erty; when, in truth, there was not the which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so east reality in any of the suppositions; so I was to go and find a seat in other churches; that when the vapours were dispelled, they and having bad eyes, and being awkward were convinced of the delusion. To John- about this, I used to go and read in the son, whose supreme enjoyment was the ex- fields on Sunday. This habit continued till ercise of his reason, the disturbance or ob- my fourteenth year; and still I find a great scuration of that faculty was the evil most to be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the reason for concealing that passage of Mr. Hector's object of his most dismal apprehension; and paper which is restored in p. 18, but Johnson himbe fancied himself seized by it, or approach- Dr. Warton (which will be found under 24 Dec. self was not so scrupulous. He says, in a letter to ing to it, at the very time when he was 1754), "Poor dear Collins! I have been often giving proofs of a more than ordinary sound-near his state, and therefore have it in great comness and vigour of judgement. That his own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means Forprising that those who wish to deprecate him should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation 2. [Ch. 53. on the Dangerous Prevalence of Imtion.-ED.] [This, it is to be presumed, was Boswell's miseration." It is wonderful, that Boswell does not see the inconsistency of blaming others for repeating what Johnson himself frequently avowed, and what Boswell himself first told the world. See ante, p. 10.—ED.] 3 [Mr. Boswell himself, as will be seen by his own complaints, and as was well known to his friends, was himself occasionally afflicted with this morbid depression of spirits, and was, at intervals, equally liable to paroxysms of what may be called morbid vivacity. He wrote, as Mr. D'Israeli observes, a Series of Essays in the London Magazine, under the title of the " Hypochondriac," commencing in 1777, and carried on till 1782.-ED.] reluctance to go to church. I then became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much think against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up 'Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life,' expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry 1." From this time forward religion was the predominant object of his thoughts; though, with the just sentiments of a conscientious Christian, he lamented that his practice of its duties fell far short of what it ought to be. This instance of a mind such as that of Johnson being first disposed, by an unexpected incident, to think with anxiety of the momentous concerns of eternity, and of "what he should do to be saved," may for ever be produced in opposition to the superficial and sometimes profane contempt that has been thrown upon those occasional impressions which it is certain many Christians have experienced; though it must be acknowledged that weak minds, from an erroneous supposition, that no man is in a state of grace who has not felt a particular conversion, have, in some cases, brought a degree of ridicule upon them; a ridicule, of which it is inconsiderate or unfair to make a general application. Hawk. p. 14. The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the time of vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced. [He had but little relish for mathematical learning, and was content with such a degree of knowledge in physicks, as he could not but acquire in the ordinary exercises of the place: his fortunes and circumstances had determined him to no particular course of study, and were such as seemed to exclude him from every one of the learned professions.] Enough has been said of his irregular mode of study. He told me, that from his earliest years he loved to read poetry, but hardly ever read any poem to an end; that he read Shakspeare at a period so early, that the speech of the Ghost in Hamlet terrified him when he was alone; that Horace's Odes were the compositions in which he took most delight 3, and it was long before he liked his Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek not the Grecian historians, but Homer and Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of which he was the most fond was Metaphysicks, but he had not read much, even in that way. I always thought that he did himself injustice in his account of what he had read, and that he must have been speaking with reference to the vast portion of study which is possible and to which a few scholars in the whole history of literature have attained; for wher How seriously Johnson was impressed I once asked him whether a person, whose with a sense of religion, even in the vigour name I have now forgotten, studied hard of his youth, appears from the follow- he answered, "No, sir. I do not believe ing passage in his minutes kept by way of he studied hard. I never knew a man who dairy: studied hard. I conclude, indeed, from the "Sept. 7, 17362. I have this day enter-effects, that some men have studied hard, as ed upon my 28th year. Mayest thou, O God, enable me, for JESUSCHRIST's sake, to spend this in such a manner, that I may receive comfort from it at the hour of death, and in the day of judgement! Amen." 1 [Mr. Boswell here adds a note, complaining that Mrs. Piozzi had, in her Anecdotes, misrepresented this matter: the misrepresentation, after all, is not great, and the editor therefore omits a long controversial note.-ED.] Bentley and Clarke." Trying him upon tha criterion upon which he formed his judge ment of others, we may be absolutely cer tain, both from his writings and his conversation, that his reading was very extensive Dr. Adam Smith,4 than whom few were volume of Hendecasyllabic poetry, entitled “ Poeta Rusticantis Literatum Otiuin sive Carmina An drea Francisci Landesii. Lond. 1713;" which belonged to Johnson, and some peculiarities of the style of these verses may be traced in his col lege compositions.-ED.] 3 [Though some of his odes are easy, and in what he no doubt thought the Horatian style, we shall see that to Miss Carter he confessed a fond ness for Martial, and his epigrams certainly were in2 [This Boswell has borrowed, without acknow-fluenced by that partiality. Dr. Hall has a smal ledgement, from Sir J. Hawkins (p. 163). But it is to be observed, that after a prayer on his birthday in 1738, Johnson (on transcribing it in 1768) adds, "This is the first solemn prayer of which I have a copy; whether I composed any before this, I question." Pr. and Med. p. 3. He had either forgotten the prayer of 1736, or 4 [Boswell might have selected, if not a bet considered it only an occasional ejaculation, and ter judge, at least better authority, for Adan not a solemn prayer. But serious and pious medi- Smith had comparatively little intercourse with tations and resolutions had been early familiar to Johnson, and the sentence pronounced is on his mind. He writes, in 1764, that "from al- which could only be justified by an intimate lite most the earliest time that he could remem-rary acquaintance. But Boswell's nationality ber, he had been forming schemes for a better life." Pr. and Med. p. 57.-ED.] (though he fancied he had quite subdued it) incli ned him to quote the eminent Scottish professor 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 bad, 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 1. heard 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 3." Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, 66 was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicksome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life."" But this is a striking 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 frequently; for the truth is, that he was then depressed by poverty, and irritated by disease. 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 frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority." 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 preving upon itself. Thus I find in his hand-writing the number of lines in each of two of Euripides's Tragedies, of the Georgicks of Virgil, of the first six books of the Eneid, of Horace's Art of Poetry, of The Bishop of Dromore [Percy] observes three of the books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in a letter to me, "The pleasure he took in of some parts of Theocritus, and of the vexing the tutors and fellows has been often tenth Satire of Juvenal; and a table, show-mentioned. But I have heard him say, what ing at the rate of various numbers a day (I suppose, verses to be read), what would be, in each case, the total amount in a week, month and year. [In his Prayers and Meditations there are frequent computations of this kind applied to the Scriptures. I resolve to study the Scriptures; I hope in the original languages. Six hundred and forty verses every Sunday will nearly comprise the Scriptures in a year. The plan which I formed for reading the Scriptures was to read six hundred verses in the Old Testament, and two hundred in the New, every week."] No man had a more ardent love of literature, or a higher respect for it, than Johnsun. His apartment in Pembroke College was that upon the second floor over the gater. The enthusiast of learning will ever contemplate it with veneration. One day, while he was sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Fanting, then master of the College, whom De called "a fine Jacobite fellow," overWe shall see many instances of a similar (not illaudable) disposition.-ED.] 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 lot or erasure, drew this observation from him. -MALONE [Dr. Matthew Panting, Master of Pembroke, ated, in the Historical Register, to have died 26th Nov. 1729; but Dr. Hall informs me that heath was certainly in Feb. 1738.-ED.] VOL. I. ought to be recorded to the honour 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 judicious expostulations of this worthy man, whose virtue awed him, and whose learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself, though I fear (said he) I was too proud to own it.' 3 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."— BOSWELL. 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 assumed character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains, that all scholars are blockheads, on account of their scholarship.-J. BOSWELL. 4 [Dr. Adams was about two years older than Johnson, having been born in 1707. He became a Fellow of Pembroke in 1723, D. D. in 1756, and Master of the College in 1775.-HALL.] |