have heard him repeat, with scarce a mistake of a word, paffages from favourite authors, of three or four octavo pages in length. One inftance of the greatnefs of his retentive faculty himself has thought fit to give, in his life of the Earl of Rochester, where may be seen a Latin poem upon Nothing, written by Pafferat; for the infertion whereof he had, as it is faid, no other aid than his own recollection. How far he approved that method of reading, which he is above said to have pursued, and what value he fet on the powers of memory, may be inferred from his character of the former of those perfons in his lives of the poets, of whom he thus fpeaks:

He was remarkable for the power of reading with great rapidity, and of retaining with great fidelity what he so easily collected. He, therefore, always knew what the prefent queftion required; ' and when his friends expreffed their wonder at his acquifitions, made in a state of apparent negligence ⚫ and drunkenness, he never difcovered his hours of reading or method of study, but involved himself in affected filence, and fed his own vanity with their ⚫ admiration and conjectures.'

It is little less than certain, that his own indigence, and the inability of his father to help him, called Johnfon from the university sooner than he meant to quit it: his father, either during his continuance there, or poffibly before, had been by misfortunes rendered infolvent, if not, as Johnson told me, an actual bankrupt. The non-attainment of a degree, which after a certain standing is conferred almost of course, he regretted not: it is true, he foon felt the want of one; but ample amends were afterwards made him, by VOL. I.

C

the

the voluntary grant of the highest academical honours that two of the most learned feminaries in Europe could beftow.

The advantages he derived from an univerfity education, finall as they may hitherto feem, went a great way towards fixing, as well his moral as his literary character: the order and difcipline of a college life, the reading the best authors, the attendance on public exercises, the early calls to prayer, the frequent inftructions from the pulpit, with all the other means of religious and moral improvement, had their proper effect; and though they left his natural temper much as they found it, they begat in his mind thofe fentiments of piety which were the rule of his conduct throughout his future life, and made fo confpicuous a part of his character.

He could not, at this early period of his life, diveft himself of an opinion, that poverty was disgraceful; and was very fevere in his cenfures of that economy in both our univerfities, which exacted at meals the attendance of poor scholars, under the several denominations of fervitors in the one, and fizers in the other: he thought that the fcholar's, like the chriftian life, levelled all diftinctions of rank and worldly pre-eminence; but in this he was mistaken: civil policy had, long before his coming into the world, reduced the feveral claffes of men to a regular fubordination, and given fervitude its fanction. The feudal fyftem of government throughout Europe had fo arranged the feveral orders of fubjects, that the lower were uniformly dependent on the higher; and in the history of the peerage of our own country, we find the retinues of the higher nobility made up of the fons and daugh

ters

ters of thofe of the lower: Wolfey had in his train, earls, barons, and knights; and the founder of the prefent Cavendish family was his gentleman-ufher, at a falary of ten pounds a year: and, to juftify the practice of perfonal fervitude at meals, we have an example of a child waiting on his parents while at dinner, in the Pietas Puerilis, among the colloquies of Erafmus *.

Upon his leaving the univerfity, he went home to the house of his father, which he found fo nearly filled. with relations, that is to fay, the maiden fifters of his mother and uncle Cornelius Ford, whom his father, on the decease of their brother in the fummer of 1731, had taken in to board, that it would fcarce receive him.

He brought with him a deep fense of religion, a due reverence for the national church, and a refpect for its minifters; and thefe he retained, though he had been a witnefs to the profligacy of his uncle Ford, which was nearly enough to have effaced all fuch impreffions from a young mind. Having not then feen, as we now do, ecclefiaftical benefices advertised for fale, and confidered by the purchafers as lay-fees; nor beheld many of the beneficed clergy abandoning the duties of the clerical function to the lowest of their order, themselves becoming gentlemen at large, mixing in all public recreations and amufements †, neglecting their ftudies

Adornatâ parentibus menfà, recito confecrationem: deinde prandentibus miniftro, donec jubeor et ipfe prandium fumere.

+ While this is the cafe, there can be very little hope of mending the fituation of the inferior clergy. An inereafe of income would. raife them to a condition of employing fubftitutes whom mere neceffity would compel to the performance of their duty, and these would have the fame reafon to complain as those who at prefent are the objects of our compaffion. In a word, were the gradations of the clergy to be multiplied, the moft effential offices of their function would continue, as they now are, to be the employment of the lowest f them.

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for

for cards, preaching the fermons of others, and affecting, in many particulars of their dress, the garb of the laity, in difobedience to the canon which enjoins decency of apparel to minifters *: I fay, not having been a witnefs to thefe late refinements in manners, he, notwithstanding the ferocity of his temper, reverenced the clergy as a body of men, who have been the greatest improvers of learning, and to whom mankind have the highest obligations; but lamented that the race was nearly extinct.

As Johnson's stay at the university was not long enough for him to complete his ftudies, it is natural to fuppofe, that at his return to Lichfield, he devoted his time to the improvement of them, and that having no call from thence, he continued there till the death of his father, which, as he has noted it, was in the month of December, 1731.

Being thus bereft of the little fupport his father was able to afford him, and having, not only a profeffion, but the means of fubfiftence to seek, he, in the month of March 1732, accepted of an invitation to the office of under-mafter or ufher of a free grammar-fchool, at Market-Bofworth in Leicestershire, founded and endowed by Sir Wolftan Dixie, lord mayor of London in 1586, the upper mafter whereof was the reverend Anthony Blackwall, the author of a well-known book on the facred claffics. The patron of this feminary was Sir Wolftan Dixie, baronet, a defcendant of the original founder; and the endowment being very fmall, Johnson's refidence was in the manfion-house of Sir Wolftan adjacent thereto; but the treatment he received from this perfon, who, in the pride of wealth, fhewed no regard for learning or parts, nor refpected The 74th, of 1603.

any

any man for his mental endowments, was fuch that, preferring the chance of the wide world to his patronage, Johnson, in the month of July, in the fame year in which he went to Bofworth, refigned his office, and took leave of a place, which he could never after speak of but in terms of the utmoft diflike, and even of abhorrence.

By the middle of June, in the year 1732, he was able to estimate that flender pittance which devolved to him upon the decease of his father; the amount whereof I find ascertained by a memorandum in his diary, which, as it is defcriptive of his circumstances at the time, I here tranflate, and at the bottom of the page have inferted verbatim.

1732, June 15, I laid by eleven guineas; on which day I received all of my father's effects which I can hope for till the death of my mother, (which I pray may be late), that is to fay, twenty pounds; fo that I have my fortune to make, and care must be taken, that in the mean time, the powers of my mind may not grow languid through poverty, nor want drive me into wickedness*.

In the month of June in the following year, 1733, I find him refident in the house of a perfon named Jarvis, at Birmingham, where, as he has noted in his diary, he rendered into English from the French, a voyage to Abyffinia, which has fince appeared to be that of Padre Jerome Lobo, a Portuguese Jefuit, with

1732, Junii 15, Undecim aureos depofui, quo die quicquid ⚫ ante matris funus, (quod ferum fit precor), de paternis bonis • fperare licet, viginti fcilicet libras, accepi. Ufque adeo mihi mea ⚫ fortuna fingenda eft interea, ne paupertate vires animi languef'cant, ne in flagitia egestas adigat, cavendum.