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." 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. Jorden2, fellow of Pembroke, was not, it seems, a man of such abilities as we should conceive requisite for the 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 BOSWELL. irreverent to my tutor." That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind." -JOHNSON. "No, Sir; stark insensibility."

66

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

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

There are, as Dr. Hall informed me, several errors in Mr. Boswell's account of Johnson's college life. He either did not consult Dr. Adams, or must have misunderstood Dr. Adams's information. There are at Pembroke two tutors for the whole college, so that Mr. Jorden was no more the tutor of Johnson than of any other student, and Johnson was equally the pupil of the other college tutor. But a more serious error is that as to the period of Johnson's actual residence at Oxford, which pervades, and, in some important points, falsifies Boswell's narrative. Boswell assumes that the years 1729, 1730, and 1731 were all spent with only the usual interruption of the college vacations at Oxford, and he adapts all his subsequent statements, and several anecdrces, to this hypothesis; but an examination of the college books proves that Johnson, who entered on the 31st October, 1728, remained there, even during the vacations, to the 12th December, 1729, when he personally left the college, and Dever returned-though his name remained on the books till ith October, 1731. This abrupt termination of his residence was no doubt occasioned by the hypochondriacal illness mentioned (antè, p. 9. n. 1. and post, p. 14.), and it is probable that his name remained on the books in the hope that his health and his means might enable him to return. health, we shall see, mended, but the pecuniary resources faied. If Johnson had remained in college in 1730, there were two scholarships to which be would bave been eligible, and one of which Dr. Hall did not doubt that he would have obtained. But see, in his visit to Oxford, in 1754, his owa opinion that it was fortunate for his literary character that he had been forced out of the routine of a college life. CROKER.

3 Oxford, March 20. 1776.- BOSWELL.

His

It ought to be remembered, that Dr. Johnson was apt, in his hterary as well as inoral exercises, to overcharge his defects. Dr. Adams informed me, that he attended his tutor's ectures, and also the lectures in the College Hall, very reguarty. BosWELL, When he related this anecdote to Mrs.

upon the Gunpowder Plot. To apologise 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 5 but for his worth. "Whenever," said he, "a young man becomes Jorden's pupil, he becomes his son."

Having given such a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr. Jorden to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, as a Christmas exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his college, and, indeed, of all the university.

It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of strong approbation. Dr. Taylor told me, that it was first printed for old Mr. Johnson, without the knowledge of his son, who was very angry when he heard of it. A Miscellany of Poems, collected by a person of the name of Husbands, was published at Oxford in 1731.7 In that Miscellany, Johnson's Translation of the Messiah appeared, with this modest motto from Scaliger's Poetics, "Er alieno ingenio poeta, ex suo tantum versificator."

I am not ignorant that critical objections have been made to this and other specimens of Johnson's Latin poetry. I acknowledge myself not competent to decide on a question of such extreme nicety. But I am satisfied with

Piozzi, he laughed very heartily at his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with a gentleness that, whenever he thought of it, astonished himself. Hawkins, also says, "that he would oftener risk the payment of a small fine than attend his lectures; nor was he studious to conceal the reason of his absence. Upon occasion of one such imposition, he said to Jorden, Sir, you have sconced me twopence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny.' I do not much credit this early specimen of Johnson's antithetical style, and indeed I believe, with Boswell, that all these instances of insurbordination and insolence were very much exaggerated, for he told the same anecdotes to Tom Warton at Oxford in a very different tone, and confessed that he expected his tutor's rebuke with a "beating heart." It would seem as if Johnson had been induced, by the too obsequious deference of his later admirers, to assign to his youthful character a little more of sturdy dignity than, when his recollection was fresher and his ear unspoiled by flattery, he assumed to Mr. Warton. (See post, under July 1754.) -CROKER.

5 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.

6 This must have been the Christmas (1728) immediately following his entering into college; for he never spent a second Christmas at Pembroke.- CROKER.

7 John Husbands was a contemporary of Johnson at Pembroke College, having been admitted a Fellow and A.M. in 1726. Hawkins says that the poem having been shown to Pope, by a son of Dr. Arbuthnot, then a gentleman commoner of Christ-church, 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." But see Pope's own statement, post, p. 41. I do not find that it was again published till twenty-one years later, when it appeared in the Gent. Mag. for 1752 with Johnson's name. CROKER.

the just and discriminative eulogy pronounced
upon it by my friend Mr. Courtenay.
"And with like ease his vivid lines assume
The garb and dignity of ancient Rome.
Let college verse-men trite conceits express,
Trick'd out in splendid shreds of Virgil's dress;
From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase,
And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays,
Then with mosaic art the piece combine,
And boast the glitter of each dulcet line:
Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse
His vigorous sense into the Latin muse;
Aspir'd to shine by unreflected light,
And with a Roman's ardour think and write.
He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire,
And, like a master, wak'd the soothing lyre:
Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim,
While Sky's wild rocks resound his Thralia's name.'
Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands,
To bloom a while, factitious heat demands:
Though glowing Maro a faint warmth supplies,
The sickly blossom in the hot-house dies:
By Johnson's genial culture, art, and toil,
Its root strikes deep, and owns the fostering soil;
Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins,
And grows a native of Britannia's plains."

The "morbid melancholy," which was lurking in his constitution, and to which we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to regular life, which at a very early period marked his character, gathered such strength in his twentieth year, as to afflict him in a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery.

From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved, and all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful influence. How wonderful, how unsearchable are the ways of GOD! Johnson, who was blessed with all the powers of genius and understanding in a degree far above the ordinary state of human nature, was at the same time visited with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire experience will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was, in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He told Mr. Paradise that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.

4

Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this

1 See post, 6 Sept. 1773, the Ode to Mrs. Thrale, written in Sky.-CROKER.

Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson, by John Courtenay, Esq. M.P. -- BOSWELL. 3 A mistake. See antè, p. 13. n. 1.- CROKER.

4 John Paradise, Esq. D.C.L. of Oxford, and F.R.S., was of Greek extraction, the son of the English consul at Salonica, where he was born: he was educated at Padua, but resided the greater part of his life in London; in the literary circles of which he was generally known, and highly esteemed.

He

disorder, strove to overcome it by forcible exertions. He frequently walked to Birmingham and back again, and tried many other expedients, but all in vain. His expression concerning it to me was, "I did not then know how to manage it." His distress became so intolerable, that he applied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Lichfield, his god-father, and put into his hands a state of his case, written in Latin. Dr. Swinfen was so much struck with the extraordinary acuteness, research, and eloquence of this paper, that in his zeal for his godson he showed it to several people. His daughter, Mrs. Desmoulins, who was many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson's house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much offended that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had been intrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the generality of mankind, is attended with contempt and disgrace.

But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an HYPOCHONDRIAC, Was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the title of "The English Malady." Though he suffered severely from it, he was not therefore degraded. The powers of his great mind might be troubled, and their full exercise suspended at times; but the mind itself was ever entire. As a proof of this, it is only necessary to consider, that, when he was at the very worst, he composed that state of his own case, which showed an uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgment. I am aware that he himself was too ready to call such

a

complaint by the name of madness; in conformity with which notion, he has traced its gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the chapters of his RASSELAS. 5 But there is surely a clear distinction between a disorder which affects only the imagination and spirits, while the judgment is sound, and a disorder by which the judgment itself is impaired. This distinction was made to me by the late Professor Gaubius of Leyden, physician to the Prince of Orange, in a conversation which I had with him several years ago, and he expanded it thus: "If," said he, "a man tells

became intimate with Johnson in the latter portion of the Doctor's life; was a member of his Essex Street club, and attended his funeral. He died Dec. 12. 1795. — CROKER.

5 Chapter 44. "On the dangerous Prevalence of Imagination;" in which Johnson no doubt relates his own sensations. -CROKER.

6 Jerome David Gaubius was born at Heidelberg, in 1705. He died in 1780, leaving several works of considerable value. A translation into English of his " Institutiones Pathologia Medicinalis" appeared in 1779. -WRIGHT.

me that he is grievously disturbed, for that he imagines he sees a ruffian coming against him with a drawn sword, though at the same time he is conscious it is a delusion, I pronounce himn to have a disordered imagination; but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be mad."

It is a common effect of low spirits or melancholy, to make those who are afflicted with it imagine that they are actually suffering those evils which happen to be most strongly presented to their minds. Some have fancied themselves to be deprived of the use of their limbs, some to labour under acute diseases, others to be in extreme poverty; when, in truth, there was not the least reality in any of the suppositions; so that, when the vapours were dispelled, they were convinced of the delusion. To Johnson, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his reason, the disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most to be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the object of his most dismal apprehension; and he fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to it, at the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary soundness and vigour of judgment. That his own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate him should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation.1

Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt in its full extent, but many 2 have experienced in a slighter degree, Johnson, in his writings, and in his conversation, never failed to display all the varieties of intellectual excellence. In his march through this world to a better, his mind

He

This, it is to be presumed, was Boswell's reason for concealing that passage of Mr. Hector's paper quoted in p. 9, note 1.; but Johnson himself was not so scrupulous. said post. Sept. 16. 1778), that "he had inherited from his father a vile melancholy, which had made him mad all his life -at least not sober;" and, in a letter to Dr. Warton (Dec. 24. 1754), he says of Collins, then insane, "Poor dear Collins! I have been often near his state, and therefore have it in great commiseration."- CROKER.

↑ Mr. Boswell was himself occasionally afflicted with this morbid depression of spirits, and was, at intervals, equally hable to paroxysms of what may be called morbid vivacity. He wrote a Series of Essays in the London Magazine, under the title of the "Hypochondriac," seventy in number, commencing in 1777, and carried on till 1783. CROKER.

Jan. 29. 1791, Boswell writes thus to Mr. Malone: -"I have, for some weeks, had the most woful return of melancholy; insomuch that I have not only had no relish of anything, but a continual uneasiness; and all the prospect before me, for the rest of life, has seemed gloomy and hopeless." Again, March 8. "In the night between the last of February and first of this month, I had a sudden relief from the inexplicable disorder, which occasionally clouds my mind and makes me miserable."- From the originals in the possession of Mr. Upcott. - WRIGHT.

"Hypochondriacism has been the complaint of the good, and the wise, and the witty, and even of the gay. Regnard,

still appeared grand and brilliant, and impressed all around him with the truth of Virgil's noble sentiment~

"Igneus est ollis vigor et cælestis origo." A

The history of his mind as to religion is an important article. I have mentioned the early impressions made upon his tender imagination by his mother, who continued her pious cares with assiduity, but, in his opinion, not with judgment. "Sunday," said he, was a heavy day to me when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read 'The Whole Duty of Man,' from a great part of which I could derive no instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of knowledge. A boy should be introduced to such books, by having his attention directed to the arrangement, to the style, and other excellencies of composition; that the mind being thus engaged by an amusing variety of objects, may not grow weary."

He communicated to me the following particulars upon the subject of his religious progress:- 15 I fell into an inattention to religion, or an indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in which we had a seat, wanted reparation 5, so I was to go and find a seat in other churches; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit continued till my fourteenth year; and still I find a great reluctance to go to church. I then became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much think against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up 'Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life,' expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But

found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in

the author of the best French comedy after Molière, was atrabilious, and Molière himself saturnine. Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all, more or less, affected by it occasionally. It was the prelude to the more awful malady of Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart; but it by no means follows that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate like theirs." Byron, vol. vi. p. 396.- WRIGHT. This list of superior intellects liable to constitutional, and, as1 believe, hereditary disorder, might be largely augmented, and would, in my opinion, include Lord Byron himself.-CROKER, 1846. -" in them we trace

4

The fiery vigour of a heavenly race." En. vi. 730.- C. 5 Johnson's parish church, St. Mary's, being in a decayed state, was taken down in 1716, and the present structure was finished and opened in 1721. How important is this otherwise trivial circumstance towards enforcing the 'habit' of church-going! The accidental interruption of this duty shook for a time Johnson's faith, and was felt even in his maturer days. - CROKER.

6 William Law was born 1686, entered, in 1705, of Em. Coll. Cambridge, Fellow in 1711, and A. M. in 1712. On the accession of the Hanover family he refused the oaths. He was tutor to Mr. Gibbon's father, at Putney, and finally retired, with two pious ladies, Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Gibbon, the aunt of the historian, to a kind of conventual seclusion at King's Cliffe, his native place. He died in 1761.CROKER.