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 so shallow a man, but that he could discover in Johnson great skill in the classics, and also a talent for Latin versification, by such compositions as few of his standing could equal. Mr. Jordan taking advantage, therefore, of a transgression 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 son 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 tranflation found its way into a miscellany published by subscription at Oxford, in the year 1731, under the name of J. Husbands. He had but little relish for mathematical learning, and was content with such a degree of knowledge in physics, as he could not but acquire in the ordinary exercises of the place: his fortunes and circumstances had determined him to no particular course of study, and were fuch as seemed to exclude him from every one of the learned professions. He, more than once, signified to a friend who had been educated at the fame fchool * 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. Cecilia'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 shew me the letter in Mr. Pope's hand-writing. school with him, then at Christ-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 institution, and how to fucceed in the latter, he had not learned ;* but his father's inability to support him checked these wishes, and left him to seek the means of a future subsistence. If nature could be said to have pointed out a profeffion for him, that of the bar seems to have been it: in that faculty, his acuteness and penetration, and above * In the two professions of the civil and common law, a notable difference is discernible: the former admits fuch only as have had the previous qualification of an univerfity education; the latter re ! ceives all whose broken fortunes drive, or a confidence in their abilities tempts to feek a maintenance in it. Men of low extraction, domeftic fervants, and clerks to eminent lawyers, have become fpecial pleaders and advocates; and, by an unrestrained abuse of the liberty of speech, have acquired popularity and wealth. A remarkable instance 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 223. '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 obfequiousness, (in Clement's-Inn, as I remember) ' and courting the attornies clerks for scraps. The extraordinary ' observance 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 desk, where he fat and ، wrote after copies of court and other hands the clerks gave him. ' He made himself so 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 ، 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 were ' there.' He fucceeded Pemberton in the office of chief justice of the king's bench, and died of an apoplexy and palsy a short time before the revolution. A curious delineation of his person and character may be seen in the volume above cited. above all, his nervous and manly elocution, could scarcely have failed to distinguish him, and to have raifed him to the highest honours of that lucrative profeffion; but, whatever nature might have intended for him, fortune seems to have been the arbiter of his destiny, and by shutting up the avenues to wealth and civil honours, to have left him to display his talents in the feveral characters of a moralist, a philosopher, and a poet. The time of his continuance at Oxford is divisible into two periods, the former whereof commenced on the 31st day of October, 1728, and determined in December, 1729, when, as appears by a note in his diary in these words, ' 1729 Dec. S. J. Oxonio rediit,' he left that place, the reafen whereof, was a failure of pecuniary fupplies from his father; but meeting with another fource, the bounty, as it is supposed, 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 studies, though not orderly, were to an aftonishing degree intenfe. Whoever has perused Mr. Spence's life of Antonio Magliabechi, may difcern a near refemblance in their manner of reading between that person and Johnfon: the former, says his author, seems never to • have applied himself to any particular study. A paf• fion for reading was his ruling paffion, and a prodi• gious memory his great talent: he read every book ' almost indifferently, as they happened to come into • his hands; he read them with a furprifing quick• ness, and yet retained, not only the sense of what he • read, but, often, all the words and the very manner ⚫ of spelling 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 observable in Johnfon: it was was wonderful to fee, when he took up a book, with what eagerness he perused, and with what haste 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 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, passages from favourite authors, of three or four octavo pages in length. One instance of the greatness 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 insertion 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 set on the powers of memory, may be inferred from his character of the former of those persons 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 so easily collected. He, therefore, always ⚫ knew what the present question required; and when ⚫ his friends expressed their wonder at his acquisitions, • made in a state of apparent negligence and drunken⚫ ness, he never discovered his hours of reading or method of study, but involved himself in affected fi< lence, 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 university sooner than he meant to quit it; his father, either during his continuance there, or or possibly 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 soon 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 most learned seminaries in Europe could bestow. The advantages he derived from an university education, small as they may hitherto seem, 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 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 so confpicuous a part of his character. He could not, at this early period of his life, divest himself of an opinion, that poverty was disgraceful; and was very severe in his cenfures of that economy in both our universities, which exacted at meals the attendance of poor scholars, under the several denominations of fervitors in the one, and sizers in the other; he thought that the scholar's, like the christian life, levelled all distinctions of rank and worldly pre-eminence; but in this he was mistaken: civil policy had, long before his coming into the world, reduced the several classes of men to a regular fubordination, and given servitude its fanction. The feudal system of government throughout Europe had fo arranged the several orders of subjects, that the lower were uniformly |