Life of Johnson
Chapter 56 : [218] 'August 1, 1715. This being the day on which the late Queen Anne died, and o

[218] 'August 1, 1715. This being the day on which the late Queen Anne died, and on which George, Duke and Elector of Brunswick, usurped the English throne, there was very little rejoicing in Oxford.... There was a sermon at St. Marie's by Dr. Panting, Master of Pembroke.... He is an honest gent. His sermon took no notice, at most very little, of the Duke of Brunswick.' Hearne's _Remains_, ii. 6.

[219] The outside wall of the gateway-tower forms an angle with the wall of the Master's house, so that any one sitting by the open window and speaking in a strong emphatic voice might have easily been overheard.

[220] Goldsmith did go to Padua, and stayed there some months. Forster's _Goldsmith_, i. 71.

[221] I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnson confirmed it.

Bramston, in his _Man of Taste_, has the same thought: 'Sure, of all blockheads, scholars are the worst.' BOSWELL. Johnson's meaning, however, is, that a scholar who is a blockhead must be the worst of all blockheads, because he is without excuse. But Bramston, in the a.s.sumed character of an ignorant c.o.xcomb, maintains that _all_ scholars are blockheads on account of their scholars.h.i.+p. J. BOSWELL, JUN. There is, I believe, a Spanish proverb to the effect that, 'to be an utter fool a man must know Latin.' A writer in _Notes and Queries_ (5th S. xii. 285) suggests that Johnson had in mind Acts xvii. 21.

[222] It was the practice in his time for a servitor, by order of the Master, to go round to the rooms of the young men, and knocking at the door to enquire if they were within; and if no answer was returned to report them absent. Johnson could not endure this intrusion, and would frequently be silent, when the utterance of a word would have ensured him from censure, and would join with others of the young men in the college in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who was thus diligent in his duty, and this they did with the noise of pots and candlesticks, singing to the tune of Chevy Chase the words in the old ballad,--

'To drive the deer with hound and horn!' _Hawkins_, p. 12. Whitefield, writing of a few years later, says:--'At this time Satan used to terrify me much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would appear to me every stair I went up.' Tyerman's _Whitefield_, i. 20.

[223] See _post_, June 12, 1784.

[224] Perhaps his disregard of all authority was in part due to his genius, still in its youth. In his _Life of Lyttelton_ he says:--'The letters [Lyttelton's _Persian Letters_] have something of that indistinct and headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius always catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as he pa.s.ses forward.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 488.

[225] Dr. Hall [formerly Master of the College] says, 'Certainly not all.' CROKER.

[226] 'I would leave the interest of the fortune I bequeathed to a college to my relations or my friends for their lives. It is the same thing to a college, which is a permanent society, whether it gets the money now or twenty years hence; and I would wish to make my relations or friends feel the benefit of it;' _post_, April 17, 1778. Hawkins (_Life_, p. 582,) says that 'he meditated a devise of his house to the corporation of that city for a charitable use, but, it being freehold he said, "I cannot live a twelvemonth, and the last statute of Mortmain stands in my way."' The same statute, no doubt, would have hindered the bequest to the College.

[227] Garrick refused to act one of Hawkins's plays. The poet towards the end of a long letter which he signed,--'Your much dissatisfied humble servant,' said:--'After all, Sir, I do not desire to come to an open rupture with you. I wish not to exasperate, but to convince; and I tender you once more my friends.h.i.+p and my play.' _Garrick Corres_. ii.

8. See _post_, April 9, 1778.

[228] See Nash's _History of Worcesters.h.i.+re_, vol. i. p. 529. BOSWELL.

To the list should be added, Francis Beaumont, the dramatic writer; Sir Thomas Browne, whose life Johnson wrote; Sir James Dyer, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord Chancellor Harcourt, John Pym, Francis Rous, the Speaker of Cromwell's parliament, and Bishop Bonner. WRIGHT. Some of these men belonged to the ancient foundation of Broadgates Hall, which in 1624 was converted into Pembroke College. It is strange that Boswell should have pa.s.sed over Sir Thomas Browne's name. Johnson in his life of Browne says that he was 'the first man of eminence graduated from the new college, to which the zeal or grat.i.tude of those that love it most can wish little better than that it may long proceed as it began.'

Johnson's _Works_, vi. 476. To this list Nash adds the name of the Revd.

Richard Graves, author of _The Spiritual Quixote_, who took his degree of B.A. on the same day as Whitefield, whom he ridiculed in that romance.

[229] See _post_, Oct. 6, 1769, and Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 15, 1773.

[230] In his _Life of Shenstone_ he writes:--'From school Shenstone was sent to Pembroke College in Oxford, a society which for half a century has been eminent for English poetry and elegant literature. Here it appears that he found delight and advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he took no degree.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 408. Johnson's name would seem to have been in like manner continued for more than eleven years, and perhaps for the same reasons.

(_Ante_, p. 58 note.) Hannah More was at Oxford in June 1782, during one of Johnson's visits to Dr. Adams. 'You cannot imagine,' she writes, 'with what delight Dr. Johnson showed me every part of his own college.... After dinner he begged to conduct me to see the college; he would let no one show it me but himself. "This was my room; this Shenstone's." Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, "In short," said he, "we were a nest of singing-birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket." [It may be doubted whether he ever played.] He ran over with pleasure the history of the juvenile days he pa.s.sed there. When we came into the Common Room, we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and hung up that very morning, with this motto: "And is not Johnson ours, himself a host;"

under which stared you in the face, "From Miss More's _Sensibility_"'

Hannah More's _Memoirs_, i. 261. At the end of 'the ludicrous a.n.a.lysis of Poc.o.c.kius' quoted by Johnson in the _Life of Edmund Smith_ are the following lines:--'Subito ad Batavos proficiscor, lauro ab illis donandus. Prius vero Pembrochienses voco ad certamen poetic.u.m.' Smith was at Christ Church. He seems to be mocking the neighbouring 'nest of singing-birds.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 381.

[231] Taylor matriculated on Feb. 24, 1729. Mr. Croker in his note has confounded him with another John Taylor who matriculated more than a year later. Richard West, writing of Christ Church in 1735, says:--'Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown.' Gray's _Letters_, ii. I.

[232]

'Si toga sordidula est et rupta calceus alter Pelle patet.'

'Or if the shoe be ript, or patches put.'

Dryden, _Juvenal_, iii. 149.

Johnson in his _London_, in describing 'the blockhead's insults,' while he mentions 'the tattered cloak,' pa.s.ses over the ript shoe. Perhaps the wound had gone too deep to his generous heart for him to bear even to think on it.

[233] 'Yet some have refused my bounties, more offended with my quickness to detect their wants than pleased with my readiness to succour them.' _Ra.s.selas_, ch. 25. 'His [Savage's] distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him; in his lowest state he wanted not spirit to a.s.sert the natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress that insolence which the superiority of fortune incited; ... he never admitted any gross familiarities, or submitted to be treated otherwise than as an equal.... His clothes were worn out; and he received notice that at a coffee-house some clothes and linen were left for him.... But though the offer was so far generous, it was made with some neglect of ceremonies, which Mr. Savage so much resented that he refused the present, and declined to enter the house till the clothes that had been designed for him were taken away.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 161 and 169.

[234]

'Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat Res angusta domi.'

Juvenal, _Sat_. iii. 164.

Paraphrased by Johnson in his _London_, 'Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.'

[235] Cambridge thirty-six years later neglected Parr as Oxford neglected Johnson. Both these men had to leave the University through poverty. There were no open scholars.h.i.+ps in those days.

[236] Yet his college bills came to only some eight s.h.i.+llings a week. As this was about the average amount of an undergraduate's bill it is clear that, so far as food went, he lived, in spite of Mr. Carlyle's a.s.sertion, as well as his fellow-students.

[237] Mr. Croker states that '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 never returned--though his _name_ remained on the books till 8th October, 1731.' I have gone into this question at great length in my _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics_, p. 329. I am of opinion that Mr. Croker's general conclusion is right. The proof of residence is established, and alone established, by the entries in the b.u.t.tery books. Now these entries show that Johnson, with the exception of the week in October 1729 ending on the 24th, was in residence till December 12, 1729. He seems to have returned for a week in March 1730, and again for a week in the following September. On three other weeks there is a charge against him of fivepence in the books. Mr. Croker has made that darker which was already dark enough by confounding, as I have shewn, two John Taylors who both matriculated at Christ Church. Boswell's statement no doubt is precise, but in this he followed perhaps the account given by Hawkins.

He would have been less likely to discover Hawkins's error from the fact that, as Johnson's name was for about three years on the College books, he was so long, in name at least, a member of the College. Had Boswell seen Johnson's letter to Mr. Hickman, quoted by Mr. Croker (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 20), he would at once have seen that Johnson could not have remained at college for a little more than three years. For within three years all but a day of his entrance at Pembroke, he writes to Mr.

Hickman from Lichfield, '_As I am yet unemployed_, I hope you will, if anything should offer, remember and recommend, Sir, your humble servant, Sam. Johnson.'

In Boswell's _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ (Aug. 15, 1773) there is a very perplexing pa.s.sage bearing on Johnson's residence at College.

'We talked of Whitefield. He said he was at the same college with him, and knew him before he began to be better than other people.' Now Johnson, as Boswell tells us, read this journal in ma.n.u.script. The statement therefore seems to be well-established indeed. Yet Whitefield did not matriculate till Nov. 7, 1732, a full year after Johnson, according to Boswell, had left Oxford. We are told that, when Johnson was living at Birmingham, he borrowed Lobo's _Abyssinia_ from the library of Pembroke College. It is probable enough that a man who frequently walked from Lichfield to Birmingham and back would have trudged all the way to Oxford to fetch the book. In that case he might have seen Whitefield. But Thomas Warton says that 'the first time of his being at Oxford after quitting the University was in 1754' (_post_, under July 16, 1754).

[238] 'March 16, 1728-9. Yesterday in a Convocation Mr. Wm. Jorden of Pembroke Coll. was elected the Univ. of Oxford rector of Astocke in com.

Wilts (which belongs to a Roman Catholic family).' Hearne's _Remains_, iii. 17. His fellows.h.i.+p was filled up on Dec. 23, 1730. Boswell's statement therefore is inaccurate. If Johnson remained at college till Nov. 1731, he would have really been for at least ten months Adams's pupil. We may a.s.sume that as his name remained on the books after Jorden left so he was _nominally_ transferred to Adams. It is worthy of notice that Thomas Warton, in the account that he gives of Johnson's visit to Oxford in 1754, says:--'He much regretted that his _first_ tutor was dead.'

[239] According to Hawkins (_Life_, pp. 17, 582 and _post_, Dec. 9, 1784) Johnson's father was at one time a bankrupt. Johnson, in the epitaph that he wrote for him (_post_, Dec. 2, 1784) describes him as 'bibliopola admodum peritus,' but 'rebus adversis diu conflictatus.' He certainly did not die a bankrupt, as is shown by his leaving property to his widow and son, and also by the following MS. letter, that is preserved with two others of the same kind in Pembroke College.

Ashby, April 19, 1736.

Good Sr.,

I must truble you again, my sister who desiurs her survis to you, & begs you will be so good if you can to pravale with Mr. Wumsley to paye you the little money due to her you may have an opertunity to speak to him & it will be a great truble for me to have a jerney for it when if he pleasd he might paye it you, it is a poore case she had but little left by Mr. Johnson but his books (not but he left her all he had) & those sold at a poore reat, and be kept out of so small a sume by a gentleman so well able to paye, if you will doe yr best for the widow will be varey good in you, which will oblige yr reall freund JAMES BATE.

To Mr. John Newton

a Sider Seller at Litchfield.

Pd. 5 to Mr. Newton.

In another hand is written,

To Gilbert Walmesley Esq.

at Lichfield.

And in a third hand,

Pd. 5 to Mr. Newton.

The exact amount claimed, as is Shewn by the letter, dated Jan. 31, 1735, was 5 6s. 4d. There is a yet earlier letter demanding payment of 5 6s. 4d. as 'due to me' for books, signed D. Johnson, dated Swarkstone, Aug. 21, 1733. It must be the same account. Perhaps D.

Johnson was the executor. He writes from Ashby, where Michael Johnson had a branch business. But I know of no other mention of him or of James Bate. John Newton was the father of the Bishop of Bristol. _Post_, June 3,1784, and Bishop Newton's _Works_, i. I.

[240] Johnson, in a letter to Dr. Taylor, dated Aug. 18, 1763, advised him, in some trouble that he had with his wife, 'to consult our old friend Mr. Howard. His profession has acquainted him with matrimonial law, and he is in himself a cool and wise man.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 342. See _post_, March 20, 1778, for mention of his son.