Master, 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 intrusion, and would
frequently be silent, when the utterance of a word would have ensured
him from censure, and would join with others of the young men in the
college in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who was thus
diligent in his duty, and this they did with the noise of pots and
candlesticks, singing to the tune of Chevy Chase the words in the
old ballad,--
'To drive the deer with hound and horn!' _Hawkins_, p. 12. Whitefield,
writing of a few years later, says:--'At this time Satan used to terrify
me much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being
my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by
ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would
appear to me every stair I went up.' Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 20.
[223] See _post_, June 12, 1784.
[224] Perhaps his disregard of all authority was in part due to his
genius, still in its youth. In his _Life of Lyttelton_ he says:--'The
letters [Lyttelton's _Persian Letters_] have something of that
indistinct and headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius
always catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as
he passes forward.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 488.
[225] Dr. Hall [formerly Master of the College] says, 'Certainly not
all.' CROKER.
[226] 'I would leave the interest of the fortune I bequeathed to a
college to my relations or my friends for their lives. It is the same
thing to a college, which is a permanent society, whether it gets the
money now or twenty years hence; and I would wish to make my relations
or friends feel the benefit of it;' _post_, April 17, 1778. Hawkins
(_Life_, p. 582,) says that 'he meditated a devise of his house to the
corporation of that city for a charitable use, but, it being freehold he
said, "I cannot live a twelvemonth, and the last statute of Mortmain
stands in my way."' The same statute, no doubt, would have hindered the
bequest to the College.
[227] Garrick refused to act one of Hawkins's plays. The poet towards
the end of a long letter which he signed,--'Your much dissatisfied
humble servant,' said:--'After all, Sir, I do not desire to come to an
open rupture with you. I wish not to exasperate, but to convince; and I
tender you once more my friendship and my play.' _Garrick Corres_. ii.
8. See _post_, April 9, 1778.
[228] See Nash's _History of Worcestershire_, vol. i. p. 529. BOSWELL.
To the list should be added, Francis Beaumont, the dramatic writer; Sir
Thomas Browne, whose life Johnson wrote; Sir James Dyer, Chief Justice
of the King's Bench, Lord Chancellor Harcourt, John Pym, Francis Rous,
the Speaker of Cromwell's parliament, and Bishop Bonner. WRIGHT. Some of
these men belonged to the ancient foundation of Broadgates Hall, which
in 1624 was converted into Pembroke College. It is strange that Boswell
should have passed over Sir Thomas Browne's name. Johnson in his life of
Browne says that he was 'the first man of eminence graduated from the
new college, to which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most
can wish little better than that it may long proceed as it began.'
Johnson's _Works_, vi. 476. To this list Nash adds the name of the Revd.
Richard Graves, author of _The Spiritual Quixote_, who took his degree
of B.A. on the same day as Whitefield, whom he ridiculed in
that romance.
[229] See _post_, Oct. 6, 1769, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773.
[230] In his _Life of Shenstone_ he writes:--'From school Shenstone was
sent to Pembroke College in Oxford, a society which for half a century
has been eminent for English poetry and elegant literature. Here it
appears that he found delight and advantage; for he continued his name
in the book ten years, though he took no degree.' Johnson's _Works_,
viii. 408. Johnson's name would seem to have been in like manner
continued for more than eleven years, and perhaps for the same reasons.
(_Ante_, p. 58 note.) Hannah More was at Oxford in June 1782, during one
of Johnson's visits to Dr. Adams. 'You cannot imagine,' she writes,
'with what delight Dr. Johnson showed me every part of his own
college.... After dinner he begged to conduct me to see the college; he
would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this
Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who
had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of
singing-birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket." [It may be
doubted whether he ever played.] He ran over with pleasure the history
of the juvenile days he passed there. When we came into the Common Room,
we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and hung up that very
morning, with this motto: "And is not Johnson ours, himself a host;"
under which stared you in the face, "From Miss More's _Sensibility_"'
Hannah More's _Memoirs_, i. 261. At the end of 'the ludicrous analysis
of Pocockius' quoted by Johnson in the _Life of Edmund Smith_ are the
following lines:--'Subito ad Batavos proficiscor, lauro ab illis
donandus. Prius vero Pembrochienses voco ad certamen poeticum.' Smith
was at Christ Church. He seems to be mocking the neighbouring 'nest of
singing-birds.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 381.
[231] Taylor matriculated on Feb. 24, 1729. Mr. Croker in his note has
confounded him with another John Taylor who matriculated more than a
year later. Richard West, writing of Christ Church in 1735,
says:--'Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited
by things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country
flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally
unknown.' Gray's _Letters_, ii. I.
[232]
'Si toga sordidula est et rupta
calceus alter
Pelle patet.'
'Or if the shoe be ript, or patches put.'
Dryden, _Juvenal_, iii. 149.
Johnson in his _London_, in describing 'the blockhead's insults,' while
he mentions 'the tattered cloak,' passes over the ript shoe. Perhaps the
wound had gone too deep to his generous heart for him to bear even to
think on it.
[233] 'Yet some have refused my bounties, more offended with my
quickness to detect their wants than pleased with my readiness to
succour them.' _Rasselas_, ch. 25. 'His [Savage's] distresses, however
afflictive, never dejected him; in his lowest state he wanted not spirit
to assert the natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress
that insolence which the superiority of fortune incited; ... he never
admitted any gross familiarities, or submitted to be treated otherwise
than as an equal.... His clothes were worn out; and he received notice
that at a coffee-house some clothes and linen were left for him.... But
though the offer was so far generous, it was made with some neglect of
ceremonies, which Mr. Savage so much resented that he refused the
present, and declined to enter the house till the clothes that had been
designed for him were taken away.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 161 and 169.
[234]
'Haud facile emergunt quorum
virtutibus obstat
Res angusta domi.'
Juvenal, _Sat_. iii. 164.
Paraphrased by Johnson in his _London_, 'Slow rises worth by poverty
depressed.'
[235] Cambridge thirty-six years later neglected Parr as Oxford
neglected Johnson. Both these men had to leave the University through
poverty. There were no open scholarships in those days.
[236] Yet his college bills came to only some eight shillings a week. As
this was about the average amount of an undergraduate's bill it is clear
that, so far as food went, he lived, in spite of Mr. Carlyle's
assertion, as well as his fellow-students.
[237] Mr. Croker states that 'an examination of the college books proves
that Johnson, who entered on the 31st October, 1728, remained there,
even during the vacations, to the 12th December, 1729, when he
personally left the college, and never returned--though his _name_
remained on the books till 8th October, 1731.' I have gone into this
question at great length in my _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His
Critics_, p. 329. I am of opinion that Mr. Croker's general conclusion
is right. The proof of residence is established, and alone established,
by the entries in the buttery books. Now these entries show that
Johnson, with the exception of the week in October 1729 ending on the
24th, was in residence till December 12, 1729. He seems to have returned
for a week in March 1730, and again for a week in the following
September. On three other weeks there is a charge against him of
fivepence in the books. Mr. Croker has made that darker which was
already dark enough by confounding, as I have shewn, two John Taylors
who both matriculated at Christ Church. Boswell's statement no doubt is
precise, but in this he followed perhaps the account given by Hawkins.
He would have been less likely to discover Hawkins's error from the fact
that, as Johnson's name was for about three years on the College books,
he was so long, in name at least, a member of the College. Had Boswell
seen Johnson's letter to Mr. Hickman, quoted by Mr. Croker (Croker's
_Boswell_, p. 20), he would at once have seen that Johnson could not
have remained at college for a little more than three years. For within
three years all but a day of his entrance at Pembroke, he writes to Mr.
Hickman from Lichfield, '_As I am yet unemployed_, I hope you will, if
anything should offer, remember and recommend, Sir, your humble servant,
Sam. Johnson.'
In Boswell's _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ (Aug. 15, 1773) there
is a very perplexing passage bearing on Johnson's residence at College.
'We talked of Whitefield. He said he was at the same college with him,
and knew him before he began to be better than other people.' Now
Johnson, as Boswell tells us, read this journal in manuscript. The
statement therefore seems to be well-established indeed. Yet Whitefield
did not matriculate till Nov. 7, 1732, a full year after Johnson,
according to Boswell, had left Oxford. We are told that, when Johnson
was living at Birmingham, he borrowed Lobo's _Abyssinia_ from the
library of Pembroke College. It is probable enough that a man who
frequently walked from Lichfield to Birmingham and back would have
trudged all the way to Oxford to fetch the book. In that case he might
have seen Whitefield. But Thomas Warton says that 'the first time of his
being at Oxford after quitting the University was in 1754' (_post_,
under July 16, 1754).
[238] 'March 16, 1728-9. Yesterday in a Convocation Mr. Wm. Jorden of
Pembroke Coll. was elected the Univ. of Oxford rector of Astocke in com.
Wilts (which belongs to a Roman Catholic family).' Hearne's _Remains_,
iii. 17. His fellowship was filled up on Dec. 23, 1730. Boswell's
statement therefore is inaccurate. If Johnson remained at college till
Nov. 1731, he would have really been for at least ten months Adams's
pupil. We may assume that as his name remained on the books after Jorden
left so he was _nominally_ transferred to Adams. It is worthy of notice
that Thomas Warton, in the account that he gives of Johnson's visit to
Oxford in 1754, says:--'He much regretted that his _first_ tutor
was dead.'
[239] According to Hawkins (_Life_, pp. 17, 582 and _post_, Dec. 9,
1784) Johnson's father was at one time a bankrupt. Johnson, in the
epitaph that he wrote for him (_post_, Dec. 2, 1784) describes him as
'bibliopola admodum peritus,' but 'rebus adversis diu conflictatus.' He
certainly did not die a bankrupt, as is shown by his leaving property to
his widow and son, and also by the following MS. letter, that is
preserved with two others of the same kind in Pembroke College.
Ashby, April 19, 1736.
Good Sr.,
I must truble you again, my sister who desiurs her survis to you, & begs
you will be so good if you can to pravale with Mr. Wumsley to paye you
the little money due to her you may have an opertunity to speak to him &
it will be a great truble for me to have a jerney for it when if he
pleasd he might paye it you, it is a poore case she had but little left
by Mr. Johnson but his books (not but he left her all he had) & those
sold at a poore reat, and be kept out of so small a sume by a gentleman
so well able to paye, if you will doe yr best for the widow will be
varey good in you, which will oblige yr reall freund JAMES BATE.
To Mr. John Newton
a Sider Seller at Litchfield.
Pd. £5 to Mr. Newton.
In another hand is written,
To Gilbert Walmesley Esq.
at Lichfield.
And in a third hand,
Pd. £5 to Mr. Newton.
The exact amount claimed, as is Shewn by the letter, dated Jan. 31,
1735, was £5 6s. 4d. There is a yet earlier letter demanding payment of
£5 6s. 4d. as 'due to me' for books, signed D. Johnson, dated
Swarkstone, Aug. 21, 1733. It must be the same account. Perhaps D.
Johnson was the executor. He writes from Ashby, where Michael Johnson
had a branch business. But I know of no other mention of him or of James
Bate. John Newton was the father of the Bishop of Bristol. _Post_, June
3,1784, and Bishop Newton's _Works_, i. I.
[240] Johnson, in a letter to Dr. Taylor, dated Aug. 18, 1763, advised
him, in some trouble that he had with his wife, 'to consult our old
friend Mr. Howard. His profession has acquainted him with matrimonial
law, and he is in himself a cool and wise man.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th
S. v. 342. See _post_, March 20, 1778, for mention of his son.
[241] See _post_, Dec. 1, 1743, note. Robert Levett, made famous by
Johnson's lines (_post_, Jan. 20, 1782), was not of this family.
[242] Mr. Warton informs me, 'that this early friend of Johnson was
entered a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged seventeen, in 1698;
and is the authour of many Latin verse translations in the _Gent. Mag_.
(vol. xv. 102). One of them is a translation of:
'My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent.' &c.
He died Aug, 3, 1751, and a monument to his memory has been erected in
the Cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward,
one of the Prebendaries. BOSWELL.
[243] Johnson's _Works_, vii. 380.
[244] See _post_, 1780, note at end of Mr. Langton's 'Collection.'
[245] See _post_, 1743.
[246] See _post_ April 24, 1779.
[247] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 61) says that in August, 1738 (? 1739),
Johnson went to Appleby, in Leicestershire, to apply for the mastership
of Appleby School. This was after he and his wife had removed to London.
It is likely that he visited Ashbourne.
[248] 'Old Meynell' is mentioned, _post_, 1780, in Mr. Langton's
'Collection,' as the author of 'the observation, "For anything I see,
foreigners are fools;"' and 'Mr. Meynell,' _post_, April 1, 1779, as
saying that 'The chief advantage of London is, that a man is always _so
near his burrow_.'
[249] See _post_, under March 16, 1759, note, and April 21, 1773. Mr.
Alleyne Fitzherbert was created Lord St. Helens.
[250] See _post_, 1780, end of Mr. Langton's 'Collection.'
[251] Johnson, writing to Dr. Taylor on July 31, 1756, said, 'I find
myself very unwilling to take up a pen, only to tell my friends that I
am well, and indeed I never did exchange letters regularly but with dear
Miss Boothby.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 304. At the end of the
_Piozzi Letters_ are given some of his letters to her. They were
republished together with her letters to him in _An Account of the Life
of Dr. Samuel Johnson_, 1805.
[252] The words of Sir John Hawkins, P. 316. BOSWELL. 'When Mr. Thrale
once asked Johnson which had been the happiest period of his past life,
he replied, "it was that year in which he spent one whole evening with
Molly Aston. That, indeed," said he, "was not happiness, it was rapture;
but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year." I must add that the
evening alluded to was not passed tête-à-tête, but in a select company
of which the present Lord Kilmorey was one. "Molly," says Dr. Johnson,
"was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a whig; and she talked all in
praise of liberty; and so I made this epigram upon her--She was the
loveliest creature I ever saw--
'Liber ut esse velim suasisti
pulchra Maria;
Ut maneam liber--pulchra Maria
vale.'
'Will it do this way in English, Sir,' said I:--
'Persuasions to freedom fall oddly
from you;
If freedom we seek--fair Maria,
adieu!'
'It will do well enough,' replied he; 'but it is translated by a lady,
and the ladies never loved Molly Aston.'" Piozzi's _Anec_., p. 157. See
_post_, May 8, 1778.
[253] Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in January, 1724-5, left one
son, named Thomas also, and eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine
married Johnson's friend, the Hon. Henry Hervey [_post, 1737]; Margaret,
Gilbert Walmsley. Another of these ladies married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell
[the man who cut down Shakspeare's mulberry tree, _post_, March 25,
1776]; Mary, or _Molly_ Aston, as she was usually called, became the
wife of Captain Brodie of the navy. MALONE.
[254] Luke vi. 35.
[255] If this was in 1732 it was on the morrow of the day on which he
received his share of his father's property, _ante_, p. 80. A letter
published in _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. x. 421, shews that for a short
time he was tutor to the son of Mr. Whitby of Heywood.
[256] Bishop Hurd does not praise Blackwall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth,
headmaster of the grammar school at Brewood, who had himself been bred
under Blackwall. MALONE. Mr. Nichols relates (_post_, Dec. 1784) that
Johnson applied for the post of assistant to Mr. Budworth.
[257] See _Gent. Mag_. Dec. 1784, p. 957. BOSWELL.
[258] See _ante_, p. 78.
[259] The patron's manners were those of the neighbourhood. Hutton,
writing of this town in 1770, says,--'The inhabitants set their dogs at
me merely because I was a stranger. Surrounded with impassable roads, no
intercourse with man to humanize the mind, no commerce to smooth their
rugged manners, they continue the boors of nature.' _Life, of W.
Hutton_, p. 45.
[260] It appears from a letter of Johnson's to a friend, dated
Lichfield, July 27, 1732, that he had left Sir Wolstan Dixie's house
recently, before that letter was written. MALONE.
[261] 'The despicable wretchedness of teaching,' wrote Carlyle, in his
twenty-fourth year, when he was himself a teacher, 'can be known only to
those who have tried it, and to Him who made the heart and knows it all.
One meets with few spectacles more afflicting than that of a young man
with a free spirit, with impetuous though honourable feelings, condemned
to waste the flower of his life in such a calling; to fade in it by slow
and sure corrosion of discontent; and at last obscurely and unprofitably
to leave, with an indignant joy, the miseries of a world which his
talents might have illustrated and his virtues adorned. Such things have
been and will be. But surely in that better life which good men dream
of, the spirit of a Kepler or a Milton will find a more propitious
destiny.' Conway's _Carlyle_, p. 176.
[262] This newspaper was the _Birmingham Journal_. In the office of the
_Birmingham Daily Post_ is preserved the number (No. 28) for May 21,
1733. It is believed to be the only copy in existence. Warren is
described by W. Hutton (_Life_, p. 77) as one of the 'three eminent
booksellers' in Birmingham in 1750. 'His house was "over against the
Swan Tavern," in High Street; doubtless in one of the old half-timbered
houses pulled down in 1838 [1850].' Timmins's _Dr. Johnson in
Birmingham_, p. 4.
[263] 'In the month of June 1733, I find him resident in the house of a
person named Jarvis, at Birmingham.' Hawkins, p. 21. His wife's maiden
name was Jarvis or Jervis.
[264] In 1741, Hutton, a runaway apprentice, arrived at Birmingham. He
says,--'I had never seen more than five towns, Nottingham, Derby,
Burton, Lichfield and Walsall. The outskirts of these were composed of
wretched dwellings, visibly stamped with dirt and poverty. But the
buildings in the exterior of Birmingham rose in a style of elegance.
Thatch, so plentiful in other places, was not to be met with in this.
The people possessed a vivacity I had never beheld. I had been among
dreamers, but now I saw men awake. Their very step along the street
showed alacrity. Every man seemed to know what he was about. The faces
of other men seemed tinctured with an idle gloom; but here with a
pleasing alertness. Their appearance was strongly marked with the modes
of civil life.' _Life of W. Hutton_, p. 41.
[265] Hutton, in his account of the Birmingham riots of 1791, describing
the destruction of a Mr. Taylor's house, says,--'The sons of plunder
forgot that the prosperity of Birmingham was owing to a Dissenter,
father to the man whose property they were destroying;' ib. p. 181.
[266] Johnson, it should seem, did not think himself ill-used by Warren;
for writing to Hector on April 15, 1755, he says,--'What news of poor
Warren? I have not lost all my kindness for him.' _Notes and Queries_,
6th S. iii. 301.
[267] That it is by no means an exact translation Johnson's _Preface_
shows. He says that in the dissertations alone an exact translation has
been attempted. The rest of the work he describes as an epitome.
[268] In the original, _Segued_.
[269] In the original, _Zeila_.
[270] Lobo, in describing a waterfall on the Nile, had said:--'The fall
of this mighty stream from so great a height makes a noise that may be
heard to a considerable distance; but I could not observe that the
neighbouring inhabitants were at all deaf. I conversed with several, and
was as easily heard by them as I heard them,' p. 101.
[271] In the original, _without religion, polity, or articulate
language_.
[272] See _Rambler_, No. 103. BOSWELL. Johnson in other passages
insisted on the high value of curiosity. In this same _Rambler_ he
says:--'Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of
a vigorous intellect.' In the allegory in _Rambler_, No. 105, he calls
curiosity his 'long-loved protectress,' who is known by truth 'among the
most faithful of her followers.' In No. 150 he writes:--'Curiosity is in
great and generous minds the first passion and the last; and perhaps
always predominates in proportion to the strength of the contemplative
faculties.' In No. 5 he assert that 'he that enlarges his curiosity
after the works of nature demonstrably multiplies the inlets to
happiness.'
[273] Rasselas, _post_, 1759.
[274] Hawkins (p. 163) gives the following extract from Johnson's
_Annales_:--'Friday, August 27 (1734), 10 at night. This day I have
trifled away, except that I have attended the school in the morning, I
read to-night in Roger's sermoms. To-night I began the breakfast law
(sic) anew.'
[275] May we not trace a fanciful similarity between Politian and
Johnson? Huetius, speaking of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, says, '...
in quo Natura, ut olim in Angelo Politiano, deformitarem oris
excellentis ingenii præstantia compensavit.' _Comment, de reb. ad eum
pertin_. Edit. Amstel. 1718, p. 200. BOSWELL. In Paulus Pelissonius
Fontanerius we have difficulty in detecting Mme. de Sévigné's friend,
Pelisson, of whom M. de Guilleragues used the phrase, 'qu'il abusait de
la permission qu'ont les hommes d'être laids.' See _Mme. de Sévigné's
Letter_, 5 Jan., 1674. CROKER.
[276] The book was to contain more than thirty sheets, the price to be
two shillings and sixpence at the time of subscribing, and two shillings
and sixpence at the delivery of a perfect book in quires. BOSWELL.
'Among the books in his library, at the time of his decease, I found a
very old and curious edition of the works of Politian, which appeared to
belong to Pembroke College, Oxford.' HAWKINS, p. 445. See _post_, Nov.,
1784. In his last work he shews his fondness for modern Latin poetry. He
says:--'Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known
to have been explored by many other of the English writers; he had
consulted the modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom
Boileau endeavoured to bring into contempt, and who are too generally
neglected.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 299.