ftudies, he profecuted them with diligence, attended both public and private lectures, performed his exercifes with alacrity, and in fhort, neglected no means or opportunities of improvement. He had at this time a great emulation, to call it by no worse a name, to excel his competitors in literature. There was a young gentleman of his college, named Meekes, whofe exercifes he could not bear to hear commended; and whenever he declaimed or difputed in the hall, Johnson would retire to the fartheft corner thereof, that he might be out of the reach of his voice.

In this courfe of learning, his favourite objects were claffical literature, ethics, and theology, in the latter whereof he laid the foundation by ftudying the Fathers. If we may judge from the magnitude of his Adverfaria, which I have now by me, his plan for study was a very extenfive one. The heads of fcience, to the extent of fix folio volumes, are copiously branched throughout it; but, as is generally the cafe with young ftudents, the blank far exceed in number the written leaves.

To fay the truth, the course of his ftudies was far from regular: he read by fits and ftarts, and, in the intervals, digested his reading by meditation, to which he was ever prone. Neither did he regard the hours of study, farther than the discipline of the college compelled him. It was the practice in his time, for a fervitor, by order of the mafter, to go round to the rooms of the young men, and knocking at the door, to enquire if they were within, and, if no answer was returned, to report them abfent: Johnson could not endure this intrusion, and would frequently be filent, when the utterance of a word would have infured him from cen

fure;

fure; and, farther to be revenged for being disturbed when he was as profitably employed as perhaps he could be, would join with others of the young men in the college in hunting, as they called it, the fervitor, who was thus diligent in his duty; and this they did with the noise of pots and candlesticks, finging to the tune of Chevy-chace, the words in that old ballad,

To drive the deer with hound and horn,' &c. not seldom to the endangering the life and limbs of the unfortunate victim.

These, and other fuch levities, marked his behaviour for a fhort time after his coming to college; but he foon convinced those about him, that he came thither for other purposes than to make sport either for himfelf or them. His exercises were applauded, and his tutor was not fo fhallow a man, but that he could difcover in Johnson great skill in the claffics, and alfo a talent for Latin verfification, by fuch compofitions as few of his standing could equal. Mr. Jordan taking advantage, therefore, of a tranfgreffion of this his pupil, the absenting himself from early prayers, imposed on him for a vacation exercise, the task of tranflating into Latin verse the Meffiah of Mr. Pope, which being fhewn to the author of the original, by a fon of Dr. Arbuthnot, then a gentleman-commoner of Christ-church, and brother of the late Mr. Arbuthnot of the Exchequer-office, was read, and returned with this encomium: The writer of this poem will leave it a queftion for pofterity, whether his or mine be the original.'* This translation

Mr. Pope, in another inftance, gave a proof of his candor and difpofition to encourage the effays of young men of genius. When Smart published his Latin tranflation of Mr. Pope's ode on St. Ceci

translation found its way into a miscellany published by fubfcription at Oxford, in the year 1731, under the name of J. Husbands.

He had but little relifh for mathematical learning, and was content with fuch a degree of knowledge in phyfics, as he could not but acquire in the ordinary exercifes of the place: his fortunes and circumstances had determined him to no particular course of study, and were fuch as feemed to exclude him from every one of the learned profeffions. He, more than once, fignified to a friend who had been educated at the fame fchool with him, then at Christchurch, and intended for the bar, an inclination to the practice of the civil or the common law; the former of these required a long courfe of academical inftitution, and how to fucceed in the latter, he had not learned; but his father's inability to fupport him checked

*

lia's day, Mr. Pope having read it, in a letter to Newbery the publisher of it returned his thanks to the author, with an affurance, that it exceeded his own original. This fact Newbery himself told me, and offered to fhew me the letter in Mr. Pope's hand-writing.

*In the two profeffions of the civil and common law, a notable difference is difcernible: the former admits fuch only as have had the previous qualification of an univerfity education; the latter receives all whofe broken fortunes drive, or a confidence in their abilities tempts to feek a maintenance in it. Men of low extraction, domestic fervants, and clerks to eminent lawyers, have become special pleaders and advocates; and, by an unrestrained abuse of the liberty of speech, have acquired popularity and wealth. A remarkable inftance of this kind occurs in the account of a famous lawyer of the last century, lord chief justice Saunders, as exhibited in the life of the lord keeper Guilford, Page 223.

He was at firft no better than a poor beggar boy, if not a parish foundling, without known parents or relations. He had found

a way

checked these wishes, and left him to feek the means of a future fubfiftence. If nature could be faid to have pointed out a profession for him, that of the bar feems to have been it in that faculty, his acutenefs and pe netration, and above all, his nervous and manly elocution, could scarcely have failed to distinguish him, and to have raised him to the highest honours of that lucrative profeffion; but, whatever nature might have intended for him, fortune feems to have been the arbiter of his destiny, and by shutting up the avenues to wealth and civil honours, to have left him to difplay his talents in the feveral characters of a moralift, a philofopher,

and a poet.

The time of his continuance at Oxford is divifible into two periods, the former whereof commenced on the 31ft day of October, 1728, and determined in Decem

a way to live by obfequiousness, (in Clement's-Inn, as I remember,) ' and courting the attornies clerks for fcraps. The extraordinary ⚫ obfervance and diligence of the boy, made the fociety willing to do him good. He appeared very ambitious to learn to write; ⚫ and one of the attornies got a board knocked up at a window on ⚫ the top of a staircafe, and that was his desk, where he fat and ⚫ wrote after copies of court and other hands the clerks gave him. ⚫ He made himself fo expert a writer, that he took in business, and earned fome pence by hackney-writing. And thus, by degrees, he pushed his faculties, and fell to forms; and, by books that were lent him, became an exquifite entering-clerk: and, by the ⚫ fame courfe of improvement of himself, an able counsel, first in special pleading, then at large. And, after he was called to the bar, had practice in the King's Bench court equal with any

there.'

He fucceeded Pemberton in the office of chief justice of the king's bench, and died of an apoplexy and palfy a fhort time before the revolution. A curious delineation of his person and character may be seen in the volume above cited.

ber, 1729, when, as appears by a note in his diary in these words, 1729 Dec. S. J. Oxonio rediit,' he left that place, the reason whereof, was a failure of pecuniary fupplies from his father; but meeting with another fource, the bounty, as it is fuppofed, of fome one or more of the members of the cathedral, he returned, and made up the whole of his refidence in the university, about three years, during all which time his academical ftudies, though not orderly, were to an astonishing degree intense. Whoever has perufed Mr. Spence's life of Antonio Magliabechi, may discern a near resemblance in their manner of reading, between that perfon and Johnfon: the former, fays his author, feems never to • have applied himself to any particular study. A paffion for reading was his ruling paffion, and a prodigious memory his great talent: he read every book ⚫ almost indifferently, as they happened to come into his hands he read them with a furprising quick⚫ nefs, and yet retained, not only the fenfe of what he read, but, often, all the words and the very manner ⚫ of fpelling them, if there was any thing peculiar of that kind in any author.'

A like propensity to reading, and an equal celerity in the practice thereof, were observable in Johnson: it was wonderful to fee, when he took up a book, with what eagerness he perused, and with what hafte his eye, for it has been related, that he had the ufe of only one, travelled over it: he has been known to read a volume, and that not a fmall one, at a fitting; nor was he inferior in the power of memory to him with whom he is compared: whatever he read, became his own for ever, with all the advantages that a penetrating judgment and deep reflection could add to it. I