Where no sour critics snarl, no sneers molest,
Safe from the tart lampoon and stinging jest;
There begs of Heaven a less distinguish'd lot,
Glad to be hid, and proud to be forgot.

EPILOGUE INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SPOKEN BY A LADY WHO WAS TO PERSONATE THE GHOST OF HERMIONE.1

YE blooming train, who give despair or joy,
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 horror 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 exiled from the blissful seats,

1 Some young ladies at Lichfield having proposed to act The Distressed Mother, Johnson wrote this, and gave it to Mr. Hector to convey it privately to them.

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'er they fly their lovers' ghosts pursue,
Inflicting all those ills which once they knew ;
Vexation, Fury, Jealousy, Despair,

Vex ev'ry eye, and ev'ry bosom tear;
Their foul deformities by all descried,

No maid to flatter, and no paint to hide.

Then melt, ye fair, while clouds around you sigh,
Nor let disdain sit louring 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.

He

The two years which he spent at home, after his return from Stourbridge, he passed in what he thought idleness, and was scolded by his father for his want of steady application. 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

1 His father took him home, probably with a view to bring him up to his own trade; for I have heard Johnson say that he himself was able to bind a book. Hawkins, Life, p. 9.—Editor.

2 Hawkins says that "A neighbouring gentleman, Mr. Andrew Corbett, having a son, who had been educated in the same school with Johnson,

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."

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 whom he was about to send to Pembroke College, in Oxford, a proposal was made and accepted, that Johnson should attend his son thither in quality of assistant in his studies,” Life, p. 9.

But the indisputable dates of Corbett's college life do not tally with the accounts of either Boswell or Hawkins. Corbett was of the University twenty months before and twelve or thirteen months after Johnson. And, on reference to the college books, it appears that Corbett's residence was so irregular, and so little coincident with Johnson's, that there is no reason to suppose that Johnson was employed either as the private tutor of Corbett, as Hawkins states, or his companion, as Boswell suggests. Much more probable is the statement made in the Memoirs, p. 16, before mentioned, that his godfather Dr. Swinfen and some other gentlemen of the neighbourhood contributed to send him to Oxford. This is corroborated by the facts of his having been sent to Dr. Swinfen's own college, and of his constant and generous protection of Mrs. Desmoulins, Dr. Swinfen's daughter, from whom, indeed, the writer of the Memoirs seems to have derived his information.-Croker.

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?

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.

He, however, went to Oxford, and was entered a commoner of Pembroke College, on the 31st of October, 1728, being then in his nineteenth year.

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. 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, author 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."1

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 1 Athen. Oxon., edit. 1721, i. 627.

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. 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. And this I said with as much nonchalance as I am now' talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor."-BOSWELL. "That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind." -JOHNSON. "No, Sir; stark insensibility." "

2

The fifth of November was at that time kept with great solemnity at Pembroke College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were required. 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. To apologize 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 politics; he should confine himself to humbler themes:" but the versification was truly Virgilian.

He had a love and respect for Jorden, not for his literature,3 but for his worth. "Whenever," said he, "a young man becomes Jorden's pupil, he becomes his son."

1 Oxford, 20th March, 1776.

2 It ought to be remembered that, Dr. Johnson was apt, in his literary as well as moral exercises, to overcharge his defects. Dr. Adams informed me that he attended his tutor's lectures, and also the lectures in the College Hall very regularly.

When, says Mrs. Piozzi, he related to me this anecdote, he laughed very heartily at the recollection of his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with wonderful acquiescence and a gentleness that, whenever he thought of it, astonished himself.—Anecdotes, p. 30.—Editor.

3

Johnson used to say, “He scarcely knew a noun from an adverb.”Nichols.

Johnson told Mr. Windham that he was so ignorant as to say that the Ramei (the disciples of Ramus) were so called from ramus, a bough.—Croker.

D