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, whose 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 course of learning, his favourite objects were claffical literature, ethics, and theology, in the latter whereof he laid the foundation by studying 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 extensive one. The heads of science, to the extent of six 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 difcipline 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 absent: Johnson could not endure this intrufion, 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 noife 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 short 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 himself 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 also a talent for Latin verfification, by fuch compofitions as few of his standing could equal. Mr. Jordan taking advan→ tage, therefore, of a tranfgreffion of this his pupil, the absenting himself from early prayers, imposed on him for a vacation exercise, the task of translating into Latin verse the Meffiah of Mr. Pope, which being shewn 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 question for pofterity, whether his or mine be the original.'"* This tranflation * Mr. Pope, in another instance, gave a proof of his candor and difpofition to encourage the effays of young men of genius. When Smart published his Latin translation of Mr. Pope's ode on St. Ceci tranflation found its way into a miscellany published by fubfcription at Oxford, in the year 1731, under the name of J. Hufbands. He had but little relifh for mathematical learn ing, and was content with fuch a degree of knowledge in phyfics, as he could not but acquire in the ordinary exercises of the place: his fortunes and circumftances 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 school 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 thefe 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 assurance, 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 abufe 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 juftice 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 seek the means of a future fubfiftence. If nature could be faid to have pointed out a profeffion for him, that of the bar feems to have been it in that faculty, his acuteness and penetration, 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 fhutting up the avenues to wealth and civil honours, to have left him to display 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 obfequioufnefs, (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 staircase, and that was his defk, 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 pufhed 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 fpecial 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, 16 THE LIFE OF A like propensity to reading, and an equal celerity in the practice thereof, were obfervable in Johnson: it was wonderful to fee, when he took up a book, with what eagerness he perufed, and with what hafte his eye, for it has been related, that he had the use 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 |