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 also 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 abfenting himself from early prayers, impofed on him for a vacation exercife, the task of tranflating into Latin verfe 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 posterity, whether his or mine be the original." This translation found its way into a mifcellany 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 exercises of the place: his fortunes and circumstances had determined him to no particular courfe 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

* 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. Cecilia's day, Mr. Pope having read it, in a letter to Newbery the pub lisher 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.

fchool with him, then at Chrift-church, and intended for the bar, an inclination to the practice of the civil or the common law; the former of these required a long course of academical inftitution, and how to fucceed in the latter, he had not learned; but his father's inability to fupport him checked these wishes, and left him to feek 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 acutenefs and penetration, and above

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 fpecial pleaders and advocates; and, by an unreftrained 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 213.

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He was at first no better than a poor beggar boy, if not a parish foundling, without known parents or relations. He had found 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 pushed his faculties, and fell to forms; and, by books that were lent him, became an exquifite entering-clerk; and, by the fame course 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 perfon and character may be seen in the volume above cited.

above all, his nervous and manly elocution, could fcarcely have failed to diftinguifh him, and to have raifed 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 deftiny, 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 December, 1729, when, as appears by a note in his diary in thefe 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 univerfity, about three years, during all which time his academical ftudies, though not orderly, were to an astonishing degree intenfe. Whoever has perufed Mr. Spence's life of Antonio Magliabechi, may difcern a near refemblance 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 prodi gious memory his great talent: he read every book almoft indifferently, as they happened to come into his hands; he read them with a furprifing 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 propenfity to reading, and an equal celerity in the practice thereof, were obfervable in Johnson: it

was

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 ufe of only one, travelled over it: he has been known to read a volume, and that not a small 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 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 himfelf has thought fit to give, in his life of the Earl of Rochefter, 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 purfued, 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 speaks:

• He was remarkable for the power of reading with great rapidity, and of retaining with great fidelity, what he fo eafily 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 drunken• nefs, he never difcovered his hours of reading or method of ftudy, 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 Johnson from the univerfity fooner than he meant to quit it; his father, either during his continuance there,

or

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 almoft of course, he regretted not it is true, he foon felt the want of one; but ample amends were afterwards made him, by the voluntary grant of the highest academical honours that two of the moft learned feminaries in Europe could beftow.

The advantages he derived from an univerfity education, fmall 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 beft authors, the attendance on public exercises, the early calls to prayer, the frequent instructions 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 those sentiments 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, divest himself of an opinion, that poverty was difgraceful; and was very severe in his cenfures of that œconomy in both our universities, which exacted at meals the attendance of poor scholars, under the feveral 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 system of government throughout Europe had fo arranged the feveral orders of fubjects, that the lower were uni

formly