Bless with a smile, or with a frown destroy;
In whose fair cheeks destructive Cupids wait,
And with unerring shafts distribute fate;
Whose snowy breasts, whose animated eyes,
Each youth admires, though each admirer dies;
Whilst you deride their pangs in barb'rous play, }
Unpitying see them weep, and hear them pray, }
And unrelenting sport ten thousand lives away; }
For you, ye fair, I quit the gloomy plains;
Where sable night in all her horrour reigns;
No fragrant bowers, no delightful glades,
Receive the unhappy ghosts of scornful maids.
For kind, for tender nymphs the myrtle blooms,
And weaves her bending boughs in pleasing glooms:
Perennial roses deck each purple vale,
And scents ambrosial breathe in every gale:
Far hence are banish'd vapours, spleen, and tears,
Tea, scandal, ivory teeth, and languid airs:
No pug, nor favourite Cupid there enjoys
The balmy kiss, for which poor Thyrsis dies;
Form'd to delight, they use no foreign arms,
Nor torturing whalebones pinch them into charms;
No conscious blushes there their cheeks inflame,
For those who feel no guilt can know no shame;
Unfaded still their former charms they shew,
Around them pleasures wait, and joys for ever new.
But cruel virgins meet severer fates;
Expell'd and exil'd from the blissful seats,
To dismal realms, and regions void of peace,
Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss.
O'er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh,
And pois'nous vapours, black'ning all the sky,
With livid hue the fairest face o'ercast,
And every beauty withers at the blast:
Where e'er they fly their lover's ghosts pursue,
Inflicting all those ills which once they knew;
Vexation, Fury, Jealousy, Despair,
Vex ev'ry eye, and every bosom tear;
Their foul deformities by all descry'd,
No maid to flatter, and no paint to hide.
Then melt, ye fair, while crouds around you sigh,
Nor let disdain sit lowring in your eye;
With pity soften every awful grace,
And beauty smile auspicious in each face;
To ease their pains exert your milder power,
So shall you guiltless reign, and all mankind adore.'
[Page 57: His wide reading. ÆTAT. 19.]
The two years which he spent at home, after his return from Stourbridge,
he passed in what he thought idleness[167], and was scolded by his father
for his want of steady application[168]. He had no settled plan of life,
nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read
a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as
chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through
them. He used to mention one curious instance of his casual reading,
when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples
behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he
climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio
proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as
one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity having been thus
excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a great part of the book.
What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere
amusement, 'not voyages and travels, but all literature, Sir, all
ancient writers, all manly: though but little Greek, only some of
Anacreon and Hesiod; but in this irregular manner (added he) I had
looked into a great many books, which were not commonly known at the
Universities, where they seldom read any books but what are put into
their hands by their tutors; so that when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams,
now master of Pembroke College, told me I was the best qualified for the
University that he had ever known come there[169].'
In estimating the progress of his mind during these two years, as well
as in future periods of his life, we must not regard his own hasty
confession of idleness; for we see, when he explains himself, that he
was acquiring various stores; and, indeed he himself concluded the
account with saying, 'I would not have you think I was doing nothing
then.' He might, perhaps, have studied more assiduously; but it may be
doubted whether such a mind as his was not more enriched by roaming at
large in the fields of literature than if it had been confined to any
single spot. The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the
parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular.
The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher
flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same
difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are
confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?
[Page 58: Johnson enters Oxford. A.D. 1728.]
That a man in Mr. Michael Johnson's circumstances should think of
sending his son to the expensive University of Oxford, at his own
charge, seems very improbable. The subject was too delicate to question
Johnson upon. But I have been assured by Dr. Taylor that the scheme
never would have taken place had not a gentleman of Shropshire, one of
his schoolfellows, spontaneously undertaken to support him at Oxford, in
the character of his companion; though, in fact, he never received any
assistance whatever from that gentleman[170].
He, however, went to Oxford, and was entered a Commoner of Pembroke
College on the 31st of October, 1728[171], being then in his nineteenth
year[172].
[Page 59: His first tutor. ÆTAT. 19.]
The Reverend Dr. Adams, who afterwards presided over Pembroke College
with universal esteem, told me he was present, and gave me some account
of what passed on the night of Johnson's arrival at Oxford[173]. On that
evening, his father, who had anxiously accompanied him, found means to
have him introduced to Mr. Jorden, who was to be his tutor. His being
put under any tutor reminds us of what Wood says of Robert Burton,
authour of the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' when elected student of Christ
Church: 'for form's sake, _though he wanted not a tutor_, he was put
under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxon[174].'
His father seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the
company he was a good scholar, and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His
figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved modestly, and
sat silent, till upon something which occurred in the course of
conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted Macrobius; and thus he
gave the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had
indulged himself.
His tutor, Mr. Jorden, fellow of Pembroke, was not, it seems, a man of
such abilities as we should conceive requisite for the instructor of
Samuel Johnson, who 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[175]. The first day after
I came to college I waited upon him, and then staid away four. On the
sixth, Mr. Jorden asked me why I had not attended. I answered I had been
sliding in Christ-Church meadow[176]. And this I said with as much
nonchalance as I am now[177] talking to you. I had no notion that I was
wrong or irreverent to my tutor[178]. BOSWELL: 'That, Sir, was great
fortitude of mind.' JOHNSON: 'No, Sir; stark insensibility[179].'
[Page 60: The fifth of November. A.D. 1728.]
The fifth of November[180] was at that time kept with great solemnity at
Pembroke College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were
required[181]. Johnson neglected to perform his, which is much to be
regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of language, would
probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot[182]. To
apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled
Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in
his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such
subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:' but
the versification was truly Virgilian[183].
[Page 61: Johnson's version of Pope's Messiah. ÆTAT. 19.]
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.'
Having given such a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr.
Jorden, to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, as a Christmas
exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a
manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept
him high in the estimation of his College, and, indeed, of all the
University[184].
It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of
strong approbation[185]. Dr. Taylor told me, that it was first printed for
old Mr. Johnson, without the knowledge of his son, who was very angry
when he heard of it. A Miscellany of Poems collected by a person of the
name of Husbands, was published at Oxford in 1731[186]. In that Miscellany
Johnson's Translation of the Messiah appeared, with this modest motto
from Scaliger's Poeticks. _Ex alieno ingenio Poeta, ex suo tantum
versificator_.
[Page 62: Mr. Courtenays eulogy. A.D. 1728.]
I am not ignorant that critical objections have been made to this and
other specimens of Johnson's Latin Poetry[187]. 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.
'And with like ease his vivid lines assume
The garb and dignity of ancient Rome.--
Let college _verse-men_ trite conceits express,
Trick'd out in splendid shreds of Virgil's dress;
From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase,
And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays:
Then with mosaick art the piece combine,
And boast the glitter of each dulcet line:
Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse
His vigorous sense into the Latian muse;
Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light,
And with a Roman's ardour _think_ and write.
He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire,
And, like a master, wak'd the soothing lyre:
Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim,
While Sky's wild rocks resound his Thralia's name[188].
Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands,
To bloom a while, factitious heat demands:
Though glowing Maro a faint warmth supplies,
The sickly blossom in the hot-house dies:
By Johnson's genial culture, art, and toil,
Its root strikes deep, and owns the fost'ring soil;
Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins,
And grows a native of Britannia's plains[189].'
[Page 63: Johnson's 'morbid melancholy'. Ætat 19.]
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 1729[190],
he felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with
perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection,
gloom, and despair, which made existence misery[191]. 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[192]. 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[193] that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he
could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.
[Page 64: Johnson consults Dr. Swinfen. A.D. 1729.]
Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to
overcome it by forcible exertions[194]. He frequently walked to Birmingham
and back again[195], and tried many other expedients, but all in vain. His
expression concerning it to me was 'I did not then know how to manage
it.' His distress became so intolerable, that he applied to Dr. Swinfen,
physician in Lichfield, his god-father, and put into his hands a state
of his case, written in Latin. Dr. Swinfen was so much struck with the
extraordinary acuteness, research, and eloquence of this paper, that in
his zeal for his godson he shewed it to several people. His daughter,
Mrs. Desmoulins, who was many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson's
house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had
communicated his case, he was so much offended, that he was never
afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be
offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately
betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had
been entrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his
young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the
generality of mankind, is attended with contempt and disgrace[196].
[Page 65: Johnson an hypochondriack. ÆTAT. 20.]
But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an
HYPOCHONDRIACK, was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and
pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the title of 'The English
Malady[197].' Though he suffered severely from it, he was not therefore
degraded. The powers of his great mind might be 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 shewed an
uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgement. I am
aware that he himself was too ready to call such a complaint by the name
of _madness_[198]; in conformity with which notion, he has traced its
gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the chapters of his
RASSELAS[199]. But there is surely a clear distinction between a disorder
which affects only the imagination and spirits, while the judgement is
sound, and a disorder by which the judgement itself is impaired. This
distinction was made to me by the late Professor Gaubius of Leyden,
physician to the Prince of Orange, in a conversation which I had with
him several years ago, and he expanded it thus: 'If (said he) a man
tells me that he is grievously disturbed, for that he _imagines_ he sees
a ruffian coming against him with a drawn sword, though at the same time
he is _conscious_ it is a delusion, I pronounce him to have a disordered
imagination; but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in
consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be _mad_.'
[Page 66: Johnson's dread of insanity. A.D. 1729.]
It is a common effect of low spirits or melancholy, to make those who
are afflicted with it imagine that they are actually suffering those
evils which happen to be most strongly presented to their minds. Some
have fancied themselves to be deprived of the use of their limbs, some
to labour under acute diseases, others to be in extreme poverty; when,
in truth, there was not the least reality in any of the suppositions; so
that when the vapours were dispelled, they were convinced of the
delusion. To Johnson, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his
reason, the disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most
to be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the object of his most dismal
apprehension[200]; and he fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to
it, at the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary
soundness 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 surprising that those who wish to
depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this
circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation[201].
Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have
felt in its full extent, but many have experienced in a slighter 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 coelestis origo_.'[202]
[Page 67: His reluctance to go to church. Ætat 20.]
The history of his mind as to religion is an important article. I have
mentioned the early impressions made upon his tender imagination by his
mother, who continued her pious care with assiduity, but, in his
opinion, not with judgement. 'Sunday (said he) was a heavy day to me
when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read
"The Whole Duty of Man," from a great part of which I could derive no
instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which
from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced
that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of
knowledge. A boy should be introduced 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.'
[Page 68: Law's Serious Call. A.D. 1729.]
[Page 69: Johnson grounded in religion. Ætat 20.]
He communicated to me the following particulars upon the subject of his
religious progress. 'I fell into an inattention to religion, or an
indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in
which we had a seat, wanted reparation[203], so I was to go and find a
seat in other churches; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about
this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit
continued till my fourteenth year; and still I find a great reluctance
to go to church[204]. 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_[205]. When at Oxford, I
took up 'Law's _Serious Call to a Holy Life_,'[206] '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[207].' From this time forward religion was the
predominant object of his thoughts[208]; 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[209],' 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.
[Page 70: Johnson's studies at Oxford. A.D. 1729.]
How seriously Johnson was impressed with a sense of religion, even in
the vigour of his youth, appears from the following passage in his
minutes kept by way of diary: Sept. 7[210], 1736. I have this day entered
upon my twenty-eighth year. 'Mayest thou, O God, enable me, for JESUS
CHRIST'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.'
[Page 71: His rapid reading and composition. Ætat 20.]
The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the
time of vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced. 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[211]; that Horace's
Odes were the compositions in which he took most delight, 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[212]
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 when
I once asked him whether a person, whose name I have now forgotten,
studied hard, he answered 'No, Sir; I do not believe he studied hard. I
never knew a man who studied hard. I conclude, indeed, from the effects,
that some men have studied hard, as Bentley and Clarke.' Trying him by
that 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[213]. 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[214]; 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[215].
[Page 72: Johnson's rooms in College. A.D. 1729.]
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[216]. Thus I find in his
hand-writing the number of lines in each of two of Euripides' Tragedies,
of the Georgicks of Virgil, of the first six books of the Æneid, of
Horace's Art of Poetry, of three of the books of Ovid's Metamorphosis,
of some parts of Theocritus, and of the tenth Satire of Juvenal; and a
table, shewing 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[217].
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 enthusiasts of learning will ever
contemplate it with veneration. One day, while he was sitting in it
quite alone, Dr. Panting[218], then master of the College, whom he called
'a fine Jacobite fellow,' overheard[219] him uttering this soliloquy in
his strong, emphatick 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[220].--And I'll mind my
business. For an _Athenian_ blockhead is the worst of all
blockheads[221].'
[Page 73: Johnson a frolicksome fellow. Ætat 20.]