also educated). This application to Mr. Lee was not successful; but Johnson had afterwards the gratification to hear that the old gentleman, who lived to a very advanced age, mentioned it as one of the most memorable events of his life, that 'he was very near having that great man for his scholar.'

He remained at Stourbridge little more than a year, and then he returned home, where he may be said to have loitered, for two years, in a state very unworthy his uncommon abilities. He had already given several proofs of his poetical genius, both in his school exercises and in other occasional compositions. Of these I have obtained a considerable collection, by the favour of Mr. Wentworth, son of one of his masters, and of Mr. Hector, his schoolfellow and friend; from which I select the following specimens :

Translation of VIRGIL. Pastoral I.

MELIBEUS.

Now, Tityrus, you, supine and careless laid, Play on your pipe beneath this beechen shade; While wretched we about the world must roam, And leave our pleasing fields and native home, Here at your ease you sing your amorous flame, And the wood rings with Amarillis' name.

TITYRUS.

Those blessings, friend, a deity bestow'd. For I shall never think him less than god: Oft on his altar shall my firstlings lie, Their blood the consecrated stones shall dye: He gave my flocks to graze the flowery meads, And me to tune at ease th' unequal reeds.

MELIBUS.

My admiration only I exprest

(No spark of envy harbours in my breast),
That, when confusion o'er the country reigns,
To you alone this happy state remains.

Here I, though faint myself, must drive my goats
Far from their ancient fields and humble cots.
This scarce I lead, who left on yonder rock
Two tender kids, the hopes of all the flock.
Had we not been perverse and eareless grown,
This dire event by omens was foreshown;
Our trees were blasted by the thunder stroke,
And left-hand crows, from an old hollow oak,
Foretold the coming evil by their dismal croak.

Translation of HORACE. Book I. Ode xxii. THE man, my friend, whose conscious heart With virtue's sacred ardour glows, Nor taints with death the envenom'd dart, Nor needs the guard of Moorish bows:

Though Scythia's icy cliffs he treads, Or horrid Afric's faithless sands;

As was likewise the Bishop of Dromore many years afterwards.-BOSWELL.

* Yet here his genius was so distinguished, that although little better than a schoolboy, he was admitted into the best company of the place, and had no common attention paid to him, of which remarkable instances were long remembered there. -PERCY.

Or where the famed Hydaspes spreads His liquid wealth o'er barbarous lands.

For while by Chloe's image charm'd,

Too far in Sabine woods I stray'd; Me singing careless and unarm'd, A grizzly wolf surprised, and fled.

No savage more portentous stain'd Apulia's spacious wilds with gore; No fiercer Juba's thirsty land,

Dire nurse of raging lions bore.

Place me where no soft summer gale

Among the quivering branches sighs; Where clouds condensed for ever veil With horrid gloom the frowning skies:

Place me beneath the burning line,
A clime deny'd to human race;
I'll sing of Chloe's charms divine,
Her heavenly voice, and beauteous face.

Translation of HORACE. Book II. Ode ix. CLOUDS do not always veil the skies,

Nor showers immerse the verdant plain; Nor do the billows always rise,

Or storms afflict the ruffled main:

Nor, Valgius, on th' Armenian shores Do the chain'd waters always freeze; Not always furious Boreas roars,

Or bends with violent force the trees.

But you are ever drown'd in tears.

For Mystes dead you ever mourn; No Setting Sol can case your cates, But finds you sad at his return.

The wise experienced Grecian sage
Mourn'd not Autilochus so long;
Nor did King Priam's hoary age

So much lament his slaughter'd son.

Leave off, at length, these woman's sighs, Augustus' numerous trophies sing; Repeat that prince's victories,

To whom all nations tribute bring.

Niphates rolls an humbler wave,
At length the undaunted Scythian yields,
Content to live the Roman's slave,

And scarce forsakes his native fields.

Translation of part of the Dialogue between HECTOR and ANDROMACHE; from the Sixth Bock of HOMER'S ILIAD.

SHE ceased; then god-like Hector answer'd kind
(His various plumage sporting in the wind),
That post, and all the rest, shall be my care;

But shall I, then, forsake the unfinish'd war?
How would the Trojans brand great Hector's name!
And one base action sully all my fame,
Acquired by wounds and battles bravely fought!
O, how my soul abhors so mean a thought!
Long since I learn'd to slight this fleeting breath,
And view with cheerful eyes approaching death,
The inexorable sisters have decreed

That Priam's house, and Priam's self, shall bleed:

The day will come, in which proud Troy shall yield,
And spread its smoking ruins o'er the field.
Yet Hecuba's nor Priam's hoary age,

Whose blood shall quench some Grecian's thirsty rage,
Nor my brave brothers, that have bit the ground,
Their souls dismiss'd through many a ghastly wound,
Can in my bosom half that grief create,

As the sad thought of your impending fate :
When some proud Grecian dame shall tasks impose,
Mimic your tears, and ridicule your woes;
Beneath Hyperia's waters shall you sweat,
And, fainting, scarce support the liquid weight:
Then shall some Argive loud insulting cry,
Behold the wife of Hector, guard of Troy !

Tears, at my name, shall drown those beauteous eyes,
And that fair bosom heave with rising sighs!
Before that day, by some brave hero's hand
May I lie slain, and spurn the bloody sand.

To a YOUNG LADY on her BIRTHDAY.1

THIS tributary verse receive, my fair,
Warm with an ardent lover's fondest prayer.
May this returning day for ever find

Thy form more lovely, more adorn'd thy mind;
All pains, all cares, may favouring Heaven remove,
All but the sweet solicitudes of love!
May powerful nature join with grateful art,
To point each glance, and force it to the heart!
O then, when conquer'd crowds confess thy sway,
When ev'n proud wealth and prouder wit obey
My fair, be mindful of the mighty trust:
Alas! 'tis hard for beauty to be just.

Those sovereign charms with strictest care employ;
Nor give the generous pain, the worthless joy:
With his own form acquaint the forward fool,
Shown in the faithful glass of ridicule;
Teach mimic censure her own faults to find,
No more let coquettes to themselves be blind,
So shall Belinda's charms improve mankind.

THE YOUNG AUTHOR.2

WHEN first the peasant, long inclin'd to roam,
Forsakes his rural sports and peaceful home,
Pleas'd with the scene the smiling ocean yields,
He scorns the verdant meads and flow'ry fields;
Then dances jocund o'er the watery way,
While the breeze whispers, and the streamers play :
Unbounded prospects in his bosom roll,
And future millions lift his rising soul;
In blissful dreams he digs the golden mine,
And raptur'd sees the new-found ruby shine.
Joys insincere! thick clouds invade the skies,
Loud roar the billows, high the waves arise;
Sick'ning with fear, he longs to view the shore,
And vows to trust the faithless deep no more.
So the young Author, panting after fame,
And the long honours of a lasting name,
Entrusts his happiness to human kind,
More false, more cruel, than the seas or wind.
Toil on, dull crowd,' in ecstasies he cries,
For wealth or title, perishable prize;
While I those transitory blessings scorn,
Secure of praise from ages yet unborn.'
This thought once form'd, all counsel comes too late,
He flies to press, and hurries on his fate;

1 Mr. Hector informs me that this was made almost impromptu in his presence.-Boswell.

2 This he inserted, with many alterations, in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1743.-BOSWELL. He, however, did not add his name.-MALONE.

Swiftly he sees the imagin'd laurels spread,
And feels the unfading wreath surround his head.
Warn'd by another's fate, vain youth, be wise,
Those dreams were Settle's once, and Ogilby's.
The pamphlet spreads, incessant hisses rise,
To some retreat the baffled writer flies;
Where no sour critics snarl, no sneers molest,
Safe from the tart lampoon and stinging jest:
There begs of Heaven a less distinguished lot,
Glad to be hid, and proud to be forgot.

EPILOGUE, intended to have been spoken by a LADY who
was to personate the Ghost of HERMIONE.1
YE blooming train, who give despair or joy,
Bless with a smile, or with a frown destroy;
In whose fair cheeks destructive Cupids wait,
And with unerring shafts distribute fate;
Whose snowy breasts, whose animated eyes,
Each youth admires, though each admirer dies;
Whilst you deride their pangs in barb'rous play,
Unpitying see them weep, and hear them pray,
And unrelenting sport ten thousand lives away.
For you, ye fair, I quit the gloomy plains,
Where sable Night in all her horror reigns;
No fragrant bowers, no delightful glades,
Receive the unhappy ghosts of scornful maids.
For kind, for tender nymphs, the myrtle blooms,
And waves her bending boughs in pleasing glooms;
Perennial roses deck each purple vale,

And scents ambrosial breathe in every gale:
Far hence are banish'd vapours, spleen, and tears,
Tea, scandal, ivory teeth, and languid airs:
No pug, nor favourite Cupid, there enjoys
The balmy kiss, for which poor Thyrsis dies;
Form'd to delight, they use no foreign arms,
Nor torturing whalebones pinch them into charms;
No conscious blushes there their cheeks inflame,
For those who feel no guilt can know no shame;
Unfaded still their former charms they show,
Around them pleasures wait, and joys for ever new.
But cruel virgins meet severer fates;
Expell'd and exil'd from the blissful seats,
To dismal realms, and regions void of peace,
Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss.
O'er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh,
And pois'nous vapours, black'ning all the sky,
With livid hue the fairest face o'ereast,
And every beauty withers at the blast:
Where'er they fly their lovers' ghosts pursue,
Inflicting all those ills which once they knew
Vexation, Fury, Jealousy, Despair,
Vex ev'ry eye, and every bosom tear;
Their foul deformities by all descry'd,
No maid to flatter, and no paint to hide.
Then melt, ye fair, while crowds around you sigh,
Nor let disdain sit low'ring in your eye;
With pity soften every awful grace,
And beauty smile auspicious in each face:
To ease their pains exert your milder power,
So shall you guiltless reign, and all mankind adore.

The two years which he spent at home, after his return from Stourbridge, he passed in what he thought idleness, and was scolded by his father for his want of steady application. had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward

Не

1 Some young ladies at Lichfield having proposed to act The Distressed Mother, Johnson wrote this, and gave it to Mr. Hector to convey it privately to them. -BOSWELL.

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 amusement, '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.'

:

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 assiduously; 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 analogy 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?

That a man in Mr. Michael Johnson's circumstances 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 assured by Dr. Taylor that the scheme never would have taken place, had not a gentleman of Shropshire, one of his schoolfellows, spontaneously undertaken to support him at Oxford in the character of his companion: though, in fact, he never received any assistance whatever from that gentleman.

He, however, went to Oxford, and was entered a commoner of Pembroke College, on the

31st of October 1728, being then in his nine teenth year.

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 passed on the night of Johnson's arrival at Oxford. 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, author 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.''

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. The first day after I came to College, I waited upon him, and then stayed 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 irreverent to my tutor.' BOSWELL: "That, sir, was great fortitude of mind.' JOHNSON: 'No, sir; stark insensibility.' 3

2

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 upon the gunpowder plot. To apologize 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 a subject as politics; he

1 Athen. Oxen. edit. 1721, i. 627.-BOSWELL 2 Oxford, 20th March 1776.-BOSWELL.

3 It ought to be remembered that Dr. Johnson was apt, in his literary as well as moral exercises, to overcharge his defects. Dr. Adams informed me that he attended his tutor's lectures, and also the lectures in the College Hall, very regularly.-BOSWELL.

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. 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 expounded 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 pronounce him to have a disordered imagination; but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in consternation calls 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 80 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.

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

1 Chapter xliii.

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 noble sentiment'Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo.'-En. vi. 730. 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 excellences 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: '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, 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 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.'1

1 Mrs. Piozzi has given a strange fantastical account of the original of Dr. Johnson's belief in our most holy religion: At the age of ten years his mind was disturbed by scruples of infidelity, which preyed upon his spirits, and made him very uneasy; the more so, as he revealed his uneasiness to none, being naturally (as he said) of a sullen temper and reserved disposi tion. He searched, however, diligently but fruitlessly, for evidences of the truth of revelation; and at length, recollecting a book he had once seen [I suppose at five years old] in his father's shop, entitled De Veritate Religionis, etc., he began to think himself

highly culpable for neglecting such a means of information, and took himself severely to task for this sin, adding many acts of voluntary, and to others unknown penance. The first opportunity which offered, of course, he seized the book with avidity; but, on