Boswell's Life of Johnson
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. 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; 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.
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, then master of the College, whom he called
'a fine Jacobite fellow,' overheard 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.--And I'll mind my
business. For an Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads.'
Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, 'was
caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicksome fellow,
and passed there the happiest part of his life.' But this is a striking
proof of the fallacy of appearances, and how little any of us know of
the real internal state even of those whom we see most frequently; for
the truth is, that he was then depressed by poverty, and irritated by
disease. When I mentioned to him this account as given me by Dr. Adams,
he said; 'Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they
mistook for frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my
way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all
authority.'
The Bishop of Dromore observes in a letter to me,
'The pleasure he took in vexing the tutors and fellows has been often
mentioned. But I have heard him say, what ought to be recorded to the
honour of the present venerable master of that College, the Reverend
William Adams, D.D., who was then very young, and one of the junior
fellows; that the mild but judicious expostulations of this worthy man,
whose virtue awed him, and whose learning he revered, made him really
ashamed of himself, "though I fear (said he) I was too proud to own it."
'I have heard from some of his cotemporaries that he was generally seen
lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students round him,
whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies, if
not spiriting them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which
in his maturer years he so much extolled.'
I do not find that he formed any close intimacies with his
fellow-collegians. But Dr. Adams told me that he contracted a love and
regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last. A short time
before his death he sent to that College a present of all his works, to
be deposited in their library; and he had thoughts of leaving to it his
house at Lichfield; but his friends who were about him very properly
dissuaded him from it, and he bequeathed it to some poor relations.
He took a pleasure in boasting of the many eminent men who had been
educated at Pembroke. In this list are found the names of Mr. Hawkins
the Poetry Professor, Mr. Shenstone, Sir William Blackstone, and others;
not forgetting the celebrated popular preacher, Mr. George Whitefield,
of whom, though Dr. Johnson did not think very highly, it must be
acknowledged that his eloquence was powerful, his views pious and
charitable, his assiduity almost incredible; and, that since his death,
the integrity of his character has been fully vindicated. Being himself
a poet, Johnson was peculiarly happy in mentioning how many of the sons
of Pembroke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive triumph, 'Sir,
we are a nest of singing birds.'
He was not, however, blind to what he thought the defects of his own
College; and I have, from the information of Dr. Taylor, a very strong
instance of that rigid honesty which he ever inflexibly preserved.
Taylor had obtained his father's consent to be entered of Pembroke, that
he might be with his schoolfellow Johnson, with whom, though some years
older than himself, he was very intimate. This would have been a great
comfort to Johnson. But he fairly told Taylor that he could not, in
conscience, suffer him to enter where he knew he could not have an able
tutor. He then made inquiry all round the University, and having found
that Mr. Bateman, of Christ Church, was the tutor of highest reputation,
Taylor was entered of that College. Mr. Bateman's lectures were so
excellent, that Johnson used to come and get them at second-hand from
Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme that his shoes were worn
out, and his feet appeared through them, he saw that this humiliating
circumstance was perceived by the Christ Church men, and he came no
more. He was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a
pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation. How
must we feel when we read such an anecdote of Samuel Johnson!
The res angusta domi prevented him from having the advantage of a
complete academical education. The friend to whom he had trusted for
support had deceived him. His debts in College, though not great, were
increasing; and his scanty remittances from Lichfield, which had all
along been made with great difficulty, could be supplied no longer, his
father having fallen into a state of insolvency. Compelled, therefore,
by irresistible necessity, he left the College in autumn, 1731, without
a degree, having been a member of it little more than three years.
And now (I had almost said POOR) Samuel Johnson returned to his native
city, destitute, and not knowing how he should gain even a decent
livelihood. His father's misfortunes in trade rendered him unable to
support his son; and for some time there appeared no means by which he
could maintain himself. In the December of this year his father died.
Johnson was so far fortunate, that the respectable character of his
parents, and his own merit, had, from his earliest years, secured him
a kind reception in the best families at Lichfield. Among these I
can mention Mr. Howard, Dr. Swinfen, Mr. Simpson, Mr. Levett, Captain
Garrick, father of the great ornament of the British stage; but
above all, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley, Register of the Prerogative Court of
Lichfield, whose character, long after his decease, Dr. Johnson has,
in his Life of Edmund Smith, thus drawn in the glowing colours of
gratitude:
'Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself
in the remembrance. I knew him very early; he was one of the first
friends that literature procured me, and I hope that, at least, my
gratitude made me worthy of his notice.
'He was of an advanced age, and I was only not a boy, yet he never
received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence
and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us
apart. I honoured him and he endured me.
'At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with
companions, such as are not often found--with one who has lengthened,
and one who has gladdened life; with Dr. James, whose skill in physick
will be long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have
gratified with this character of our common friend. But what are the
hopes of man! I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has
eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the publick stock of
harmless pleasure.'
In these families he passed much time in his early years. In most of
them, he was in the company of ladies, particularly at Mr. Walmsley's,
whose wife and sisters-in-law, of the name of Aston, and daughters of a
Baronet, were remarkable for good breeding; so that the notion which has
been industriously circulated and believed, that he never was in good
company till late in life, and, consequently had been confirmed
in coarse and ferocious manners by long habits, is wholly without
foundation. Some of the ladies have assured me, they recollected him
well when a young man, as distinguished for his complaisance.
In the forlorn state of his circumstances, he accepted of an offer to be
employed as usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire,
to which it appears, from one of his little fragments of a diary, that
he went on foot, on the 16th of July.
This employment was very irksome to him in every respect, and he
complained grievously of it in his letters to his friend Mr. Hector, who
was now settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. The letters are lost; but
Mr. Hector recollects his writing 'that the poet had described the dull
sameness of his existence in these words, "Vitam continet una dies" (one
day contains the whole of my life); that it was unvaried as the note of
the cuckow; and that he did not know whether it was more disagreeable
for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules.' His general
aversion to this painful drudgery was greatly enhanced by a disagreement
between him and Sir Wolstan Dixey, the patron of the school, in whose
house, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of domestick chaplain,
so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was treated with what
he represented as intolerable harshness; and, after suffering for a few
months such complicated misery, he relinquished a situation which all
his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion, and even
a degree of horrour. But it is probable that at this period, whatever
uneasiness he may have endured, he laid the foundation of much future
eminence by application to his studies.
Being now again totally unoccupied, he was invited by Mr. Hector to
pass some time with him at Birmingham, as his guest, at the house of
Mr. Warren, with whom Mr. Hector lodged and boarded. Mr. Warren was the
first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to
Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade,
by his knowledge of literature; and he even obtained the assistance of
his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical Essay printed in the
newspaper, of which Warren was proprietor. After very diligent inquiry,
I have not been able to recover those early specimens of that particular
mode of writing by which Johnson afterwards so greatly distinguished
himself.
He continued to live as Mr. Hector's guest for about six months, and
then hired lodgings in another part of the town, finding himself as well
situated at Birmingham as he supposed he could be any where, while he
had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of subsistence. He
made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter,
a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr. Taylor, who by his
ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his success in trade, acquired
an immense fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old
school-fellow and intimate friend, was Johnson's chief inducement to
continue here.
His juvenile attachments to the fair sex were very transient; and it is
certain that he formed no criminal connection whatsoever. Mr. Hector,