tered of Pembroke College; Corbett, as a gentleman-commoner, and Johnson as a commoner. The college tutor, Mr. Jordan, was a man of no genius; and Johnson, it seems, shewed an early contempt of mean abilities, in one or two instances behaving with insolence to that gentleman. Of his general conduct at the university there are no particulars that merit attention, except the translation of Pope's Messiah, which was a college exercise imposed upon him as a task, by Mr. Jordan. Corbett left the university in about two years, and Johnson's salary ceased. He was, by consequence, straitened in his circumstances: but he still remained at college. Mr. Jordan the tutor, went off to a living; and was succeeded by Dr. Adams, who afterwards became head of the college, and was esteemed through life for his learning, his talents, and his amiable character. Johnson grew more regular in his attendance. Ethics, theology, and classic literature, were his favourite studies. He discovered, notwithstanding, early symptoms of that wandering disposition of mind, which adhered to him to the end of his life. His reading was by fits and starts, undirected to any particular science. General philology, agreeably to his cousin Ford's advice, was the object of his ambition. He received, at that time, an early impression of piety, and a taste for the best authors, ancient and modern. It may, notwithstanding, be questioned whether, except his Bible, he ever read a book entirely through. Late in life, if any man praised a book in his presence, he was sure to ask, "Did you read it through ?" If the answer was in the affirmative, he did not

seem willing to believe it. He continued at the university till the want of pecuniary supplies obliged him to quit the place. He obtained, however, the assistance of a friend, and returning in a short time, was able to comple a residence of three years. The history of his exploits, at Oxford, he used to say, was best known to Dr. Taylor and Dr. Adams. Wonders are told of his memory, and, indeed, all who knew him late in life, can witness that he retained that faculty in the greatest vigour.

*

From the university Johnson returned to Litchfield. His father died soon after, December 1731; and the whole receipt out of his effects, as appeared by a memorandum in the son's handwriting, dated 15th June, 1732, was no more than twenty pounds. In this exigence, determined that poverty should neither depress his spirit nor warp his integrity, he became undermaster of a Grammar-school at Market-Bosworth in Leicestershire. That resource, however, did not last long. Disgusted by the pride of Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of that little seminary, he left the place in discontent, and ever after spoke of it with abhorrence. In 1733 he went on a visit to Mr. Hector, who had been his school-fellow, and was then a surgeon at Bir

The entry of this is remarkable, for his early resolution to preserve through life a fair and upright character. "1732, Junii 15. Undecim aureos deposui, quo die, "quidquid ante matris funus (quod serum sit precor) "de paternis bonis sperare licet, viginti scilicet libras, " accepi. Usque adeo mihi mea fortuna fingenda est "interea, et ne paupertate vires animi languescant, ne "in flagitia egestas adigat, cavendum,"

mingham, lodging at the house of Warren, a bookseller. At that place Johnson translated a voyage to Abyssinia, written by Jerome Lobo, a Portuguese missionary. This was the first literary work from the pen of Dr. Johnson. His friend Hector was occasionally his amanuensis. The work was, probably, undertaken at the desire of Warren, the bookseller, and was printed at Birmingham; but it appears in the Literary Magazine, or History of the Works of the Learned, for March 1735, that it was published by Bettesworth and Hitch, Paternoster-row. It contains a narrative of the endeavours of a company of missionaries to convert the people of Abyssinia to the Church of Rome. In the preface to this work Johnson observes, "that the "Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general "view of his countrymen, has amused his readers "with no romantic absurdities, or incredible " fictions. He appears, by his modest and un"affected narration, to have described things as he saw them; to have copied nature from "the life; and to have consulted his senses, "not his imagination. He meets with no basi"lisks, that destroy with their eyes; his croco"diles devour their prey, without tears; and his "cataracts fall from the rock, without deafening "the neighbouring inhabitants. The reader

"will here find no regions cursed with irreme"diable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing "sunshine: nor are the nations, here described, "either void of all sense of humanity, or con"summate in all private and social virtues: here are no Hottentots without religion, polity, or

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"articulate language; no Chinese perfectly po"lite, and completely skilled in all sciences: he "will discover, what will always be discovered "by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that, "wherever human nature is to be found, there " is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth “not appear partial in his distributions, but has "balanced, in most countries, their particular "inconveniences by particular favours." We have here an early specimen of Johnson's manner; the vein of thinking and the frame of the sentences are manifestly his: we see the infant Hercules. The translation of Lobo's Narrative has been reprinted lately in a separate volume, with some other tracts of Dr. Johnson's, and therefore forms no part of this edition; but a compendious account of so interesting a work as Father Lobo's discovery of the head of the Nile will not, it is imagined, be unacceptable to the reader.

Father Lobo, the Portuguese Missionary, embarked, in 1622, in the same fleet with the Count Vidigueira, who was appointed, by the king of Portugal, Viceroy of the Indies. They arrived at Goa; and, in January 1624, Father Lobo set out on the mission to Abyssinia. Two of the Jesuits, sent on the same commission, were murdered in their attempt to penetrate into that empire. Lobo had better success; he surmounted all difficulties, and made his way into the heart of the country. Then follows a description of Abyssinia, formerly the largest empire of which we have an account in history. It extended from the Red Sea to the kingdom of Congo, and

from Egypt to the Indian Sea, containing no less than forty provinces. At the time of Lobo's mission, it was not much larger than Spain, consisting then but of five kingdoms, of which part was entirely subject to the Emperor, and part paid him a tribute, as an acknowledgment. The provinces were inhabited by Moors, Pagans, Jews, and Christians. The last was, in Lobo's time, the established and reigning religion. The diversity of people and religion is the reason why the kingdom was under different forms of government, with laws and customs extremely various. Some of the people neither sowed their lands, nor improved them by any kind of culture, living upon milk and flesh, and, like the Arabs, encamping without any settled habitation.

In

some places they practised no rites of worship, though they believed that, in the regions above, there dwells a Being that governs the world. This Deity they call in their language Oul. The Christianity professed by the people in some parts, is so corrupted with superstitious errors, and heresies, and so mingled with ceremonies borrowed from the Jews, that little, besides the name of Christianity, is to be found among them. The Abyssins cannot properly be said to have either cities or houses; they live in tents or cottages made of straw or clay, very rarely building with stone. Their villages or towns consist of these huts; yet even of such villages they have but few; because the grandees, the viceroys, and the emperor himself, are always in camp, that they may be prepared, upon the most sudden alarm, to meet every emergence, in a country which is engaged every year either in foreign