Life of Johnson
Chapter 4 : [Page 57: His wide reading. aeTAT. 19.]The two years which he spent at home, after his r

[Page 57: His wide reading. aeTAT. 19.]

The two years which he spent at home, after his return from Stourbridge, he pa.s.sed in what he thought idleness[167], and was scolded by his father for his want of steady application[168]. He 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 during these two years he told me, was not works of mere amus.e.m.e.nt, '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[169].'

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 a.s.siduously; 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 a.n.a.logy 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 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?

[Page 58: Johnson enters Oxford. A.D. 1728.]

That a man in Mr. Michael Johnson's circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sured by Dr. Taylor that the scheme never would have taken place had not a gentleman of Shrops.h.i.+re, one of his schoolfellows, spontaneously undertaken to support him at Oxford, in the character of his companion; though, in fact, he never received any a.s.sistance whatever from that gentleman[170].

He, however, went to Oxford, and was entered a Commoner of Pembroke College on the 31st of October, 1728[171], being then in his nineteenth year[172].

[Page 59: His first tutor. aeTAT. 19.]

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 pa.s.sed on the night of Johnson's arrival at Oxford[173]. 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, authour 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[174].'

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 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[175]. 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[176]. And this I said with as much nonchalance as I am now[177] talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor[178]. BOSWELL: 'That, Sir, was great fort.i.tude of mind.' JOHNSON: 'No, Sir; stark insensibility[179].'

[Page 60: The fifth of November. A.D. 1728.]

The fifth of November[180] was at that time kept with great solemnity at Pembroke College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were required[181]. 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[182]. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, ent.i.tled 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 politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:' but the versification was truly Virgilian[183].

[Page 61: Johnson's version of Pope's Messiah. aeTAT. 19.]

He had a love and respect for Jorden, not for his literature, 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[184].

It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of strong approbation[185]. 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[186]. In that Miscellany Johnson's Translation of the Messiah appeared, with this modest motto from Scaliger's Poeticks. _Ex alieno ingenio Poeta, ex suo tantum versificator_.

[Page 62: Mr. Courtenays eulogy. A.D. 1728.]

I am not ignorant that critical objections have been made to this and other specimens of Johnson's Latin Poetry[187]. I acknowledge myself not competent to decide on a question of such extreme nicety. But I am satisfied with the just and discriminative eulogy p.r.o.nounced upon it by my friend Mr, Courtenay.

'And with like ease his vivid lines a.s.sume 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. .h.i.tch in pilfer'd lays: Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast the glitter of each dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse His vigorous sense into the Latian muse; Aspir'd to s.h.i.+ne 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[188].

Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands, To bloom a while, fact.i.tious 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 fost'ring soil; Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins, And grows a native of Britannia's plains[189].'

[Page 63: Johnson's 'morbid melancholy'. aetat 19.]

The 'morbid melancholy,' which was lurking in his const.i.tution, 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[190], he felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery[191]. 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[192]. How wonderful, how unsearchable are the ways of G.o.d!

Johnson, who was blest 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[193] that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.

[Page 64: Johnson consults Dr. Swinfen. A.D. 1729.]

Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to overcome it by forcible exertions[194]. He frequently walked to Birmingham and back again[195], 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 G.o.d-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 G.o.dson he shewed 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 entrusted 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[196].

[Page 65: Johnson an hypochondriack. aeTAT. 20.]

But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an HYPOCHONDRIACK, was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the t.i.tle of 'The English Malady[197].' 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 shewed an uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgement. I am aware that he himself was too ready to call such a complaint by the name of _madness_[198]; in conformity with which notion, he has traced its gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the chapters of his Ra.s.sELAS[199]. But there is surely a clear distinction between a disorder which affects only the imagination and spirits, while the judgement is sound, and a disorder by which the judgement 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 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 p.r.o.nounce him 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 p.r.o.nounce him to be _mad_.'

[Page 66: Johnson's dread of insanity. A.D. 1729.]

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[200]; 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 judgement. 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 circ.u.mstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation[201].

Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt in its full extent, but many 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 still appeared grand and brilliant, and impressed all around him with the truth of Virgil's n.o.ble sentiment--

'_Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo_.'[202]

[Page 67: His reluctance to go to church. aetat 20.]

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 care with a.s.siduity, but, in his opinion, not with judgement. '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.'

[Page 68: Law's Serious Call. A.D. 1729.]

[Page 69: Johnson grounded in religion. aetat 20.]

He communicated to me the following particulars upon the subject of his religious progress. '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[203], 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[204]. 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_[205]. When at Oxford, I took up 'Law's _Serious Call to a Holy Life_,'[206] 'expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it.

But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry[207].' From this time forward religion was the predominant object of his thoughts[208]; though, with the just sentiments of a conscientious Christian, he lamented that his practice of its duties fell far short of what it ought to be.

This instance of a mind such as that of Johnson being first disposed, by an unexpected incident, to think with anxiety of the momentous concerns of eternity, and of 'what he should do to be saved[209],' may for ever be produced in opposition to the superficial and sometimes profane contempt that has been thrown upon, those occasional impressions which it is certain many Christians have experienced; though it must be acknowledged that weak minds, from an erroneous supposition that no man is in a state of grace who has not felt a particular conversion, have, in some cases, brought a degree of ridicule upon them; a ridicule of which it is inconsiderate or unfair to make a general application.

[Page 70: Johnson's studies at Oxford. A.D. 1729.]

How seriously Johnson was impressed with a sense of religion, even in the vigour of his youth, appears from the following pa.s.sage in his minutes kept by way of diary: Sept. 7[210], 1736. I have this day entered upon my twenty-eighth year. 'Mayest thou, O G.o.d, enable me, for JESUS CHRIST'S sake, to spend this in such a manner that I may receive comfort from it at the hour of death, and in the day of judgement! Amen.'

[Page 71: His rapid reading and composition. aetat 20.]

The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the time of vacation which he pa.s.sed at home, cannot be traced. Enough has been said of his irregular mode of study. He told me that from his earliest years he loved to read poetry, but hardly ever read any poem to an end; that he read Shakspeare at a period so early, that the speech of the ghost in Hamlet terrified him when he was alone[211]; that Horace's Odes were the compositions in which he took most delight, and it was long before he liked his Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read _solidly_ at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer[212]

and Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of which he was the most fond was Metaphysicks, but he had not read much, even in that way. I always thought that he did himself injustice in his account of what he had read, and that he must have been speaking with reference to the vast portion of study which is possible, and to which a few scholars in the whole history of literature have attained; for when I once asked him whether a person, whose name I have now forgotten, studied hard, he answered 'No, Sir; I do not believe he studied hard. I never knew a man who studied hard. I conclude, indeed, from the effects, that some men have studied hard, as Bentley and Clarke.' Trying him by that criterion upon which he formed his judgement of others, we may be absolutely certain, both from his writings and his conversation, that his reading was very extensive. Dr. Adam Smith, than whom few were better judges on this subject, once observed to me that 'Johnson knew more books than any man alive.' He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end[213]. He had, from the irritability of his const.i.tution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read or wrote. A certain apprehension, arising from novelty, made him write his first exercise at College twice over[214]; but he never took that trouble with any other composition; and we shall see that his most excellent works were struck off at a heat, with rapid exertion[215].

[Page 72: Johnson's rooms in College. A.D. 1729.]

Yet he appears, from his early notes or memorandums in my possession, to have at various times attempted, or at least planned, a methodical course of study, according to computation, of which he was all his life fond, as it fixed his attention steadily upon something without, and prevented his mind from preying upon itself[216]. Thus I find in his hand-writing the number of lines in each of two of Euripides' Tragedies, of the Georgicks of Virgil, of the first six books of the aeneid, of Horace's Art of Poetry, of three of the books of Ovid's Metamorphosis, of some parts of Theocritus, and of the tenth Satire of Juvenal; and a table, shewing at the rate of various numbers a day (I suppose verses to be read), what would be, in each case, the total amount in a week, month, and year[217].

No man had a more ardent love of literature, or a higher respect for it than Johnson. His apartment in Pembroke College was that upon the second floor, over the gateway. The enthusiasts of learning will ever contemplate it with veneration. One day, while he was sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Panting[218], then master of the College, whom he called 'a fine Jacobite fellow,' overheard[219] him uttering this soliloquy in his strong, emphatick 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[220].--And I'll mind my business. For an _Athenian_ blockhead is the worst of all blockheads[221].'

[Page 73: Johnson a frolicksome fellow. aetat 20.]

Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, 'was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicksome[222]

fellow, and pa.s.sed there the happiest part of his life.' But this is a striking proof of the fallacy of appearances, and how little any of us know of the real internal state even of those whom we see most frequently; for the truth is, that he was then depressed by poverty, and irritated by disease. When I mentioned to him this account as given me by Dr. Adams, he said, 'Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick[223]. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority[224].'