'Sir,' he once said, 'I have never complained of the world, nor do I think that I have reason to complain. It is rather to be wondered at that I have so much.' But it was not only the habit of easy contentment that made him bear no ill-will against his college. There had been no shameful neglect of duty on the part of his tutors, no unworthy example set by the Fellows to excite his indignation as it excited Gibbon's. Gibbon complained that though the government of his college and, indeed, of the University, was in the hands of the clergy, yet he received no instruction in religion. Johnson, on the other hand, said that it was to Oxford that was due the first occasion of his thinking in earnest of religion, after he became capable of rational enquiry. The tutors of Pembroke were not, indeed, so far as ability went, worthy of their illustrious pupil. Each of them might have said with Dr. Adams, 'I was his nominal tutor; but he was above my mark.' Yet Johnson revered Adams' learning, and felt that he had received a high compliment. His eyes flashed with grateful satisfaction' when Boswell told him what Adams had said, and he exclaimed, 'That was liberal and noble.' But the tutors of Pembroke, if they were not very able, were at least honest men, and did their duty. Of one of them, Jorden, he said, 'Whenever a young man becomes Jorden's pupil he becomes his son.'

He retained for him a great regard, and when he visited Oxford twenty-five years after he had left he learnt with regret that he was dead.

Every reader of Boswell will remember how Johnson, like Gibbon, was one day absent from a lecture, and how his tutor after dinner sent for him to his room. 'I expected a sharp rebuke for my idleness, and went with a beating heart. When we were seated he told me he had sent for me to drink a glass of wine with him, and to tell me he was not angry with me for missing his lecture. This was indeed a most severe reprimand.' If we may trust Hawkins' statement, he once, on being fined for not attending a lecture, said to his tutor, 'Sir, you have sconced me two-pence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny.' If he really made this rude speech, it is not impossible that a second most severe reprimand followed in a second glass of wine in the kindly tutor's

room.

What it was that led old Michael Johnson to select Pembroke College for his son we can only conjecture. Hawkins says that he was placed there in the position of a commoner by a neighbouring gentleman in quality of assistant to his son in his studies, who entered as a gentleman-commoner. This statement is confirmed by Johnson's old friend, Dr. Taylor. But Pembroke was

the college of his god-father, Dr. Samuel Swinfen, of Lichfield, from whom, no doubt, he took his name, and who may have borne part of the expenses of his education. Even if Johnson went as a kind of tutor to another student, it was likely enough on Dr. Swinfen's advice that Pembroke College was chosen for the two young men. It had borne a high name even at the end of the previous century. In February 1695-6, a Mr. Lapthorne wrote to a Mr. Coffin: 'I have placed my son in Pembrook Colledge, the Society being under the care of the Bishop of Bristol, Dr. Hall, who is Master and constantly resident. The house, tho' it bee but a little one, yet is reputed to be one of the best for sobriety and order.'1 Bishop Hall was master for fortyfive years, so that he had time to work a thorough reform, if a reform had been needed. He had died the year Johnson was born. The master in Johnson's time was that 'fine Jacobite fellow,' Dr. Matthew Panting. Hearne calls him 'an honest gent,' and tells how 'he had to preach the sermon at St. Mary's on the day on which George, Duke and Elector of Brunswick, usurped the English throne, but his sermon took no notice, at most very little, of the Duke of Brunswick.'

Historical Manuscripts Commission, ' Appendix to Fifth Report,' p. 385.

The buildings have been not a little altered since Johnson's day; yet we can still bring back before ourselves the little college as it was when his father, proud of his son, brought him up to Oxford on the last day of October in the year 1728. The tower has undergone considerable changes, but we can still look up with reverence to the second floor above the gateway, where Johnson lived and whence he was overheard by the Master from his house hard by uttering, in his strong emphatic 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.' We can think how it was in that room no doubt that, at the end of his first year's residence, he recorded in his diary, Desidia valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus. 'I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to her syren strains.' We can stand in the gateway and remember how he used to lounge there with a circle of young students whom he was entertaining with his wit and keeping from their studies. To those around him he seemed 'a gay and frolicsome fellow; but it was bitterness,' he said, 'that they mistook for frolic. I was miserably pobr, and I

thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit.' 'They all feared him, however,' as one of them nearly fifty years afterwards admitted. He used to criticise the words they used, for even then he was delicate in language. Sir, I remember you would not let us say prodigious at college.'

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The quadrangle is much as he knew it. sent library was in his time the hall. The raised dais at the western end, where the high table stood, was an addition made by Clayton, the first Master, to a more ancient building which had formed part of an earlier foundation called Broadgate Hall. The eastern end is, I believe, all that is left of this ancient foundation. Bishop Bonner belonged to this society, and must have dined many a day within these walls while he was still a young student unstained by blood, little thinking how hateful a name he was destined to bear through all time. It was in the hall that at the classical lecture Johnson sat as far away from Meeke as he could, that he might not hear him construe, for he could not bear his superiority. In this venerable building is treasured up Johnson's writing-desk. What memorial is preserved of Meeke?

It was here, too, that he made his first declamation. He wrote but one copy, and that coarsely, and he had given it into the hands of his tutor. He had

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