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rumque,

Quid quod putidulùm nostra Camæna sonat? Limosum nobis Promus dat callidus haustum, Virgilio vires uva Falerna dedit. Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora Poetæ ? Ingenium jubeas purior haustus alat!" Another, is in a graver and better style. "Adjecere bonæ paulo plus artis Athena." "Quas natura dedit dotes, Academia promit; Dat menti propriis Musa nitere bonis. Materiam statuæ sic præbet marmora tellus, Saxea Phidiaca spirat imago manu 1."] He very early began to attempt keeping notes or memorandums, by way of a diary of his life. I find, in a parcel of loose leaves, the following spirited resolution, to contend against his natural indolence:

"Oct. 1729. Desidia valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus.-I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to her si

ren strains."

I have also in my possession a few leaves of another Libellus, or little book, entitled ANNALES, in which some of the early particulars of his history are registered in La

tin.

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 2 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 boast

1

[Johnson repeated this idea in the Latin verses on the termination of his Dictionary, entitled IN2O1 ZEATTON, but not, as the editor thinks, so elegantly as in the epigram. These themes, with much other information (which is distinguished by the addition of his name), have been supplied by the Rev. George William Hall, D. D. now Master of Pembroke College, who has felt a generous anxiety to contribute as much as was in his power to the history of him whom Pembroke must reckon as one of her most illustrious sons.-ED.]

2 [Certainly not all, and those which we have are not all marked as presented by him.-HALL.]

ing 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."

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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 Christchurch was the tutor of highest reputation, Taylor was entered of that college 4. 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!

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Tursellinus, in his Life of St. Ignatius Loyola, that this intrepid founder of the order of Jesuits, when he arrived at Goa, after having made a severe pilgrimage through the eastern deserts, persisted in wearing his miserable shattered shoes, and when new ones were offered him, rejected them as an unsuitable indulgence.

The res angusta domi1 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?

Dr. Adams, the worthy and respectable master of Pembroke College, has generally had the reputation of being Johnson's tutr. The fact, however, is, that, in 1731, Mr. Jorden quitted the college, and his pupils were transferred to Dr. Adams; so

[Notwithstanding what has been said on this subject, as far as we can judge from a cursory view of the weekly account in the buttery books, Johnson appears to have lived as well as the other commovers and scholars, and he left no college debts. -HALL]

2 [He was not quite three years a member of the college, having been entered Oct. 31, 1728, and his name having been finally removed Oct. 8, 1:31. It would appear by temporary suspensions of his name, and replacements of it, as if he had contemplated an earlier departure from college, and had been induced to continue on with the hope of returning: this, however, he never did after his absence, Dec. 1729, having kept a contmos residence of sixty weeks.—HALL.]

that had Johnson returned, Dr. Adams would have been his tutor. It is to be wished that this connexion had taken place. His equal temper, mild disposition, and politeness of manners, might have insensibly softened the harshness of Johnson, and infused into him those more delicate charities, those petites morales, in which, it must be confessed, our great moralist was more deficient than his best friends could fully justify. Dr. Adams paid Johnson this high compliment. He said to me at Oxford, in 1776, "I was his nominal tutor; but he was above my mark." When I repeated it to Johnson, his eyes flashed with grateful satisfaction, and he exclaimed, "That was liberal and noble 3."

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: [he had become insolvent, if not, as Dr. Johnson told Sir J. Hawkins, an actual bankrupt]; and for some time there appeared no means by which he could maintain himself. In December of this year

his father died 4.

Hawk. D. 17.

The state of poverty in which he died, appears from a note in one of Johnson's little diaries of the following year, which strongly displays his spirit and virtuous dignity of mind.

3

"1732, Julii 15. Undecim aureos de

[This seems hardly consistent with the preceding facts. If Adams called himself his nominal tutor, only because the pupil was above his mark, the expression would be liberal and noble; but if he was his nominal tutor, only because he would have been his tutor if Johnson had returned, the case is different, and Boswell is, either way, guilty of an inaccuracy, which (however trifling) he would not have forgiven in Hawkins or Mrs. Piozzi. Nor does there seem any reason for the regret (disparaging towards Mr. Jorden) which Boswell expresses, that "this connexion between Johnson and Dr. Adams had not taken place;" for Johnson, as we have seen (ante, p. 21), gave Jorden the highest moral praise, by saying, that "when a young man became his pupil, he became his son." Of the regard which his pupils felt for Mr. Jorden, Dr. Hall has pointed out a remarkable instance in the Monthly Chronicle for November, 1729. "About this time, the Rev. Mr. Jorden, B. D., Fellow of Pembroke College, in Oxford, was presented, by Mr. Vyse, a young gentleman, his pupil, to the rectory of Standon, in Staffordshire, vacant by the death of the Rev. Mr. Jarvis."-ED.]

[It will be observed, that Mr. Boswell slurs over the years 1729, 1730, and 1731, under the genetamference that they were all spent at Oxford; bat Dr. Hall's accurate statement of dates from the college books, proves that Johnson personalAy left college 12th Dec. 1729, though his name rea uned on the books near two years longer, viz. t th Oct. 1731. Here then are two important years, the 21st and 22d of his age, to be accounted for: and Mr. Boswell's assertion (a little farther el, that he could not have been assistant to Anthe Blackwell, because Blackwell died in 1730, before Johnson had left college, falls to the ground. That these two years were not pleasantly or profitaby spent, may be inferred from the silence of Johnson and all his friends about them. It is due to Pembroke to note particularly this absence, becase that institution possesses (on the foundation of Sir J. Bennett, Lord Ossulston), two scholarsupe, to one of which Johnson would have been gible, and probably (considering his claims) dected in 1730, had he been a candidate.-ED.]-HALL.]

4

[Among the MSS. of Pembroke College are a few little bills for books had by Mr. Walmesley of Michael Johnson, with letters from the widow, the son Nathanael, and others about payment, which declare the state of poverty she was left in

posui, quo die quicquid ante matris funus | lies; but had never neglected the cultiva(quod serum sit precor) de palernis bonis tion of his mind. His belief of revelation sperari licet, viginti scilicet libras accepi. was unshaken; his learning preserved his Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. principles; he grew first regular, and then Interea, ne paupertate vires animi langues- pious. cant, nec in flagitia egestas abigat, cavendum. I layed by eleven guineas on this day, when I received twenty pounds, being all that I have reason to hope for out of my father's effects, previous to the death of my mother; an event which, I pray GoD, may be very remote. I now, therefore, see that I must make my own fortune. Meanwhile, let me take care that the powers of my mind be not debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act."

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 in 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, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical 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.

"He had mingled with the gay world without exemption from its vices or its fol

1 Mr. Warton informs me, "that this early friend of Johnson was entered a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged 17, in 1698; and is the author of many Latin verse translations in the Gentleman's Magazine. One of them is a translation (Gent. Mag. vol. 15, p. 102) of "My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent," &c. He [was born in 1680, and] died August 3, 1751. 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. [He was the son of W. Walmesley, LL. D. chancellor of the diocese of Lichfield from 1698 to 1713, who was elected M. P. for that city in 1701, and brother of Dr. Walmesley, Dean of Lichfield, who died in Sept. 1730. Johnson, and Boswell after him, spell this name Walmsley, but the true spelling is that which has been adopted in this note.-ED.]

"His studies had been so various, that I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find. Such was his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication, that it may be doubted whether a day now passes, in which I have not some advantage from his friendship.

"At this man's table2 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-inlaw, 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.

And that his politeness 3 was not merely occasional and temporary, or confined to the circles of Lichfield, is ascertained by the testimony of a lady 4, who, in a paper with which I have been favoured by a daughter of his intimate friend and physician, Dr. Lawrence, thus describes Dr. Johnson some years afterwards:

"As the particulars of the former part of

2 [This acknowledgement does not seem quite adequate to Johnson's obligations to Mr. Walmesley, who certainly gave him more active proofs of his benevolence than the mere admission to his table and society.-ED.]

3 [There is, it will be observed, in all this, no testimony to Johnson's personal politeness, but only to his having been admitted to polite company.-ED.]

4 [It were to be wished that Boswell had stated the name of this lady, as he has given us so much reason to distrust the information derived from "the circles of Lichfield."—ED.]

Dr. Johnson's life do not seem to be very accurately known, a lady hopes that the following information may not be unacceptable.

| sides his intimacy with the above-mentioned persons, who were surely people of rank and education, while he was yet at Lichfield he used to be frequently at the house of Dr. Swinfen, a gentleman of very ancient family in Staffordshire, from which, after the death of his elder brother, he inherited a good estate. He was, beside, a physician of very extensive practice; but for want of due attention to the management of his domestic concerns, left a very large family in indigence. One of his daughters, Mrs. Desmoulins, afterwards found an asylum in the house of her old friend, whose doors were always open to the unfortunate, and who well observed the precept of the Gospel, for he was kind to the unthankful and to the evil 4.""

"She remembers Dr. Johnson on a visit to Dr. Taylor, at Ashbourn, some time between the end of the year 37, and the middle of the year 40; she rather thinks it to have been after he and his wife were removed to London. During his stay at Ashbourn, he made frequent visits to Mr. Meynell, at Bradley, where his company was much desired by the ladies of the family, who were, perhaps, in point of elegance and accomplishments, inferiour to few of those with whom he was afterwards acquainted. Mr. Meynell's eldest daughter was afterwards married to Mr. Fitzherbert, father to Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert, lately In the forlorn state of his circumstances, munister to the court of Russia [and since he accepted of an offer to be employed as Lord St. Helens.] Of her, Dr. Johnson usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in said, in Dr. Lawrence's study, that she had Leicestershire, to which it appears, from the best understanding he ever met with in one of his little fragments of a diary, that any human being. At Mr. Meynell's he also he went on foot, on the 16th of July.— commenced that friendship with Mrs. Hill" Julii 16. Bosvortiam pedes Boothby, sister to the present Sir Brook petii." But it is not true, as Boothby, which continued till her death 2. has been erroneously related, that The young woman whom he used to he was assistant to the famous Anthony call Molly Aston, was sister to Sir Blackwall, whose merit has been honourThomas Aston, and daughter to a ed by the testimony of Bishop Hurd 5, baronet; she was also sister to the wife of who was his scholar; for Mr. Blackwall his friend, Mr. Gilbert Walmsley 3. Be- died on the 8th of April, 17306, more than a year before Johnson left the University.

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[Dr. Taylor must have been at this time a very young man. His residence at Ashbourn was perroonial, and not ecclesiastical, as has been soppoend The house and grounds which Dr. Jonson's visits have rendered remarkable are now the property of Mr. Webster, Dr. Taylor's lege-ED.]

2

Gent. Mag.

liv. 957.

This employment was very irksome to him in every respect, and he complained of the Navy. Another sister, who was unmarried, was living at Lichfield in 1776.—MALONE. [Of the latter, whose name was Elizabeth, Miss Seward has put an injurious character into the mouth of Dr. Johnson (in a dialogue which she reports herself to have had with him). She died in 1785, in the 78th year of her age.-ED.]

4 [Here Mr. Boswell has admitted the insinuation of an anonymous informant against poor Mrs. Desmoulins, as bitter, surely, as any thing which can be charged against any of his rival bi

* {For the last few years of her life this lady responded with Dr. Johnson, and some of her letters are appended to the Account of his early Life, so often quoted. Indeed, they occupy 126 Pegs of the 144 of which that little publication oncrusts. Miss Seward hints that there was an early attachment between Johnson and Miss Boothby. Miss Seward's anecdotes are so justly dis-ographers; and, strange to say, this scandal is credited, that it is hardly worth observing, that there appears no ground whatsoever for this story; and the published letters, which are of a very seri6 and pious cast, not only negative Miss Seward's gossiping fancies, but throw some doubt a the securacy of Mr. Boswell's informant, for they seem to prove that there had not been any-Ed.] mate or even early acquaintance between the parts Miss Boothby was born in 1708, and din 1736.-ED.]

conveyed in a quotation from the book of Charity. Mrs. Desmoulins was probably not popular with "the ladies of Lichfield." She is supposed to have forfeited the protection of her own family by, what they thought, a derogatory marriage. Her husband, it is said, was a writing-master.

5 There is here (as Mr. James Boswell observes to me) a slight inaccuracy. Bishop Hurd, in the Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to his Commentary Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in Jan- on Horace's Art of Poetry, &c., does not praise vary. 1724-5, left one son, named Thomas also, Blackwall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth, headand eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine master of the grammar-school at Brewood, in are Johnson's friend, the Hon. Henry Her- Staffordshire, who had himself been bred under ves, Margaret, Gilbert Walmsley. Another of Blackwall.-MALONE. [We shall see presently, se is [Jane] married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell on the authority of Mr. Nichols, that Johnson pro[the clergyman who cut down Shakspeare's mul-posed himself to Mr. Budworth as an assistant.Sy-tree] Mary, or Molly Aston, as she was ED.]

aily called, became the wife of Captain Brodie 6 [See ante, p. 27.—ED.]

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 Dixie, the patron of the school, in whose house, I have been told, he officiated as a kind of domestic 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.2

[Mr. Malone, in a note on this passage, states that he had read a letter of Johnson's to a friend, dated 27th July, 1732, saying that he had then recently left Sir Wolstan Dixie's house, and that he had some hopes of succeeding, either as master or usher, in the school of Ashbourn.

If Mr. Malone be correct in the date of this letter, and Mr. Boswell be also right in placing the extract from the diary under the year 1732, John- | son's sojourn at Bosworth could have been not more than ten days, a time too short to be characterized as "a period of complicated misery," and to be remembered during a long life with the strongest aversion and horror." It must also be observed, that according to the statement of Messrs. Boswell and Malone compared with the College books, Johnson's life, from December, 1729, to the beginning of 1733, is wholly unaccounted for, except the ten days supposed to have been so lamentably spent at Bosworth. The only probable solution of these difficulties is, that the walk to Bosworth on the 16th July, 1732, was not his first appearance there; but that having been called to Lichfield, to receive his share of his father's property, which, we have seen, p. 27, that he did on the 15th July, he returned to Bosworth on the 16th, perhaps for the purpose of making arrangements for finally leaving it, which he did within ten days. It seems very extraordinary, that the laborious diligence, and the lively curiosity of Hawkins, Boswell, Murphy, and Malone, were able to discover so little of the history of Johnson's life from December, 1729, to his marriage in July, 1736, and that what they have told should be liable to so much doubt. It may be inferred, that it was a period to which Johnson looked back with little satisfaction, and of which he did not love to talk; though it cannot be doubted that, during these five or six important years, he must have collected a large portion of that vast stock of information, with which he afterwards surprised and delighted the world.-Ed.]

2 [There seems reason to suspect that Sir Wol

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But it is probable that at this perio ever uneasiness he may have end laid the foundation of much futu nence by application to his studies. Being now again totally unoccu was invited by Mr. Hector to pa time with him at Birmingham, as h at the house of Mr. Warren, wit Mr. Hector lodged and boarded Warren was the first established b in Birmingham, and was very att Johnson, who he soon found cou much service to him in his trade knowledge of literature; and he tained the assistance of his pen in ing some numbers of a periodica printed in the newspaper of which was proprietor. After very dili quiry, I have not been able to reco early specimens of that particular writing by which Johnson after greatly distinguished himself.

He continued to live as Mr. guest for about six months, and th lodgings in another part of the tow ing himself as well situated at Birr as he supposed he could be any while he had no settled plan of` very scanty means of subsisten made some valuable acquaintanc amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a whose widow he afterwards mar Mr. Taylor, who, by his ingenuit chanical inventions and his success acquired an immense fortune. But fort of being near Mr. Hector, his ol fellow and intimate friend, was J chief inducement to continue here

In what manner he employed this period, or whether he derive any pecuniary advantage, I have able to ascertain. He probably g money from Mr. Warren; and we tain, that he executed here one pie erary labour, of which Mr. Hecto voured me with a minute account.

mentioned that he had read at I College a Voyage to Abyssinia, (a Portuguese Jesuit), and that he an Abridgement and translation o the French into English might b ful and profitable publication, Mr. and Mr. Hector joined in urging h dertake it. He accordingly agr the book not being to be found in

stan Dixie's temper was, to say the 1 irregular and violent; but it must also lected, that Johnson's own mind ha been in a state of morbid disturbance.

3 Sir John Hawkins states, from on son's diaries, that he lodged, in June Birmingham, at the house of a person n vis, probably a relation of Mrs. Porter, afterwards married, and whose maiden Jervis.-MALONE.

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