language, would probably have produced something sublime 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, but for his worth. "Whenever (said he) a young man becomes Jorden's pupil, he becomes his son." was not, it seems, a man of such abilities as we should conceive requisite for the instructor of Samuel Johnson, who [would Hawk. oftener risk the payment of a small p. 9. 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 X sconced me two-pence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny 1."] He 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 col- Having given such a specimen of his polege, I waited upon him, and then staid etical powers, he was asked by Mr. Jorden, away four. On the sixth, Mr. Jorden ask- to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, ed me why I had not attended. I answered as a Christmas exercise 3. He performed it I had been sliding in Christ-church mea- with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterdow. And this I said with as much non-ly a manner, that he obtained great applause chalance as I am now talking to you. I from it, which ever after kept him high in had no notion that I was wrong or the estimation of his college, and, indeed, irreverent to my tutor." BoswELL. of all the university. 1776. That, sir, was great fortitude of mind." JOHNSON. "No, sir; stark insensibility 2." Oxford, 20 Mar. Piozzi, p. 23. 66 Hawk p. 13. moner 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."] 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 4, was published at Oxford in 1731. In that Miscellany, Johnson's Translation of the Messiah appeared, with this modest motto from Scaliger's Poeticks, "Ex alieno ingen io Poeta, ex suo tantum versificator." It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of strong approbation. [The poem having been [When he told this anecdote to shown to him by a son of Dr. ArMrs. Piozzi, he laughed very heart-buthnot, then a gentleman comily at the recollection of his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with wonderful acquiescence, and a gentleness that, whenever he thought of it, astonished himself. He said, too, that when he made his first declamation, he wrote over but one copy, and that coarsely; and having given it into the hand of the tutor who stood to receive it as he passed, was obliged to begin by chance and continue on how he could, for he had got but little of it by heart; so, fairly trusting to his present powers for immediate supply, he finished by adding astonishment to the applause of all who knew how little was owing to study. A prodigious risk, however, said some one: "Not at all (exclaims Johnson): no man, I suppose, leaps at once into deep water who does not know how to swim."] 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 tion. Mr. Boswell either did not consult Dr. Adams, or did not remember accurately what the Doctor must have told him on these points.-ED.] 1 [It has been thought worth while to preserve this anecdote, as an early specimen of the antithetical style of Johnson's conversation.-ED.] 2 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. 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 sat isfied with the just and discriminative eulogy pronounced upon it by my friend Mr. Courtenay, [in his Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. John son.] "And with like ease, his vivid lines assume [If Dr. Hall's inferences from the dates in the college books be correct, this must have been the Christmas immediately following his entry into college.-ED.] [John Husbands, the editor of this Miscellany, was a cotemporary of Johnson at Pembroke College, having been admitted a fellow and A. M. in 1728.-HALL.] From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase, And with a Roman's ardor think and write. Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands, and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock. Dr Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to overcome it by forcible exertions 4. 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 ap plied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Lichfield. his godfather 5, and put into his hands a state of his case, written in Latin. Swinfen was so much struck with the ex traordinary acuteness, research, and elo quence 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. 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 17292, he felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, But let not little men triumph upon which made existence misery. From this knowing that Johnson was an HYPOCHON dismal malady he never afterwards was per- DRIACK, was subject to what the learned, phifectly relieved; and all his labours, and all losophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well his enjoyments, were but temporary inter- treated under the title of "The English ruptions of its baleful influence. How won- Malady." Though he suffered severely derful, how unsearchable are the ways of from it, he was not therefore degraded. GOD! Johnson, who was blest with all the The powers of his great mind might be powers of genius and understanding in a degree far above the ordinary state of human part of his life in London; in the literary circles nature, was at the same time visited with a of which he was generally known and highly esdisorder so afflictive, that they who know it teemed. He seems to have been a good classical by dire experience, will not envy his exalt- scholar, and certainly spoke most European lanThat it was, in some de- guages (amongst the rest, modern Greek and Turkish) with great facility. This unusual accomplishgree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous ment was probably the cause of his intimacy with system, that inexplicable part of our frame, Sir William Jones, to whom we learn (Ťeignappears highly probable. He told Mr. Pa- mouth's Life of Jones, p. 221.) that he addressradise 3 that he was sometimes so languided a distich in ancient Greek, which had the sin ed endowments. 1 [This refers to a Latin ode addressed to Mrs. Thrale from the Isle of Skie, which will be mentioned in its proper place, under 6th September, 1773.-ED.] [It seems, as Dr. Hall suggests, probable, that this is a mistake for 1730: Johnson appears to have remained in college during the vacation of 1729, and we have no trace of him in the year 1730, during which he was, possibly, labouring under this malady, and, on that account, absent from college. ED.] 3 [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 gular honour of being copied by the hand of the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire. Mr. Paradise 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. Mr. Paradise died, at his house in Titchfield-street, 12 Dec. 1795.-ED.] 4 [It appears, from his own account of his father (ante, p. 10), that he thought exercise and change of place alleviated this disease, which he inherited from him. It seems that he did not, in his own mind, connect this disease with the scrofula, which he derived, as he thought, from his mother, or, as Dr. Swinfen believed, from his e.-ED.] nurse. [See ante, p. 15.-ED.] + X Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt in its full extent, but many have experienced in a lighter 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 noble sentiment “Igneus est ollis vigor et cælestis origo.” The history of his mind as to religion is an important article. I have mentioned the early impressions made upon his tender im 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 judgement. 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 judgement is sound, and a disor-agination by his mother, who continued her der 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 tell 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 mansion of knowledge. A boy should be introtell me that he sees this, and in consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be mad." pious cares with assiduity, 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 acces duced to such books, by having his atten tion 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." 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 He communicated to me the following strongly presented to their minds. Some particulars upon the subject of his religious have fancied themselves to be deprived of progress. "I fell into an inattention to rethe use of their limbs, some to labour under ligion, or an indifference about it, in my acute diseases, others to be in extreme pov- ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in erty; when, in truth, there was not the which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so least reality in any of the suppositions; so I was to go and find a seat in other churches, that when the vapours were dispelled, they and having bad eyes, and being awkward were convinced of the delusion. To John- about this, I used to go and read in the son, whose supreme enjoyment was the ex- fields on Sunday. This habit continued till ercise of his reason, the disturbance or ob- my fourteenth year; and still I find a great scuration of that faculty was the evil most to be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the reason for concealing that passage of Mr. Hector's object of his most dismal apprehension; and paper which is restored in p. 18, but Johnson himhe fancied himself seized by it, or approach- Dr. Warton (which will be found under 24 Dec. self was not so scrupulous. He says, in a letter to ing to it, at the very time when he was 1754), "Poor dear Collins! I have been often giving proofs of a more than ordinary sound-near his state, and therefore have it in great comness and vigour ofjudgement. 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 2. [Ch. 53. on the Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination.-ED.] 2 [This, it is to be presumed, was Boswell's miseration." It is wonderful, that Boswell does not see the inconsistency of blaming others for repeating what Johnson himself frequently avowed, and what Boswell himself first told the world. See ante, p. 10.-ED.] 3 [Mr. Boswell himself, as will be seen by his own complaints, and as was well known to his friends, was himself occasionally afflicted with this morbid depression of spirits, and was, at intervals, equally liable to paroxysms of what may be called morbid vivacity. He wrote, as Mr. D'Israeli observes, a Series of Essays in the London Magazine, under the title of the "Hypochondriac," commencing in 1777, and carried on till 1782.-ED.] reluctance to go to churcn. 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." From this time forward religion was the predominant object of his thoughts; 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 unex-, pected incident, to think with anxiety of the momentous concerns of eternity, and of "what he should do to be saved," 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. Hawk. p. 14. The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the time of vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced. [He had but little relish for mathematical learning, and was content with such a degree of knowledge in physicks, as he could not but acquire in the ordinary exercises of the place: his fortunes and circumstances had determined him to no particular course of study, and were such as seemed to exclude him from every one of the learned professions.] 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; that Horace's Odes were the compositions in which he took most delight 3, 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 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 How seriously Johnson was impressed I once asked him whether a person, whose with a sense of religion, even in the vigour name I have now forgotten, studied hard, of his youth, appears from the follow- he answered, "No, sir. I do not believe ing passage in his minutes kept by way of he studied hard. I never knew a man who dairy: studied hard. I conclude, indeed, from the Sept. 7, 17362. I have this day enter-effects, that some men have studied hard, as ed upon my 28th year. Mayest thou, O God, enable me, for JESUSCHRIST'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." [Mr. Boswell here adds a note, complaining that Mrs. Piozzi had, in her Anecdotes, misrepresented this matter: the misrepresentation, after all, is not great, and the editor therefore omits a long controversial note.-ED.] Bentley and Clarke." Trying him upon 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,4 than whom few were 3 [Though some of his odes are easy, and in what he no doubt thought the Horatian style, we shall see that to Miss Carter he confessed a fondness for Martial, and his epigrams certainly were influenced by that partiality. Dr. Hall has a small volume of Hendecasyllabic poetry, entitled "Poetæ Rusticantis Literatum Otium sive Carmina Andreæ Francisci Landesii. Lond. 1713;" which belonged to Johnson, and some peculiarities of the style of these verses may be traced in his college compositions.-ED.] 2 [This Boswell has borrowed, without acknowledgement, from Sir J. Hawkins (p. 163). But it is to be observed, that after a prayer on his birthday in 1738, Johnson (on transcribing it in 1768) adds, "This is the first solemn prayer of which I have a copy; whether I composed any before this, I question." Pr. and Med. p. 3. He had either forgotten the prayer of 1736, or [Boswell might have selected, if not a betconsidered it only an occasional ejaculation, and ter judge, at least better authority, for Adam not a solemn prayer. But serious and pious medi- Smith had comparatively little intercourse with tations and resolutions had been early familiar to Johnson, and the sentence pronounced is one his mind. He writes, in 1764, that" from al- which could only be justified by an intimate litemost the earliest time that he could remem-rary acquaintance. But Boswell's nationality ber, he had been forming schemes for a better life." Pr. and Med. p. 57.-ED.] (though he fancied he had quite subdued it) inclined him to quote the eminent Scottish professor 1729-ETAT. 20. heard him uttering this soliloquy in his strong 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 fellow, and passed 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. 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." 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. Thus I find in his hand-writing the number of lines in each of two of Euripides's Tragedies, of the Georgicks of Virgil, of the first six books The Bishop of Dromore [Percy] observes of the Eneid, of Horace's Art of Poetry, of three of the books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, in a letter to me, "The pleasure he took in of some parts of Theocritus, and of the vexing the tutors and fellows has been often tenth Satire of Juvenal; and a table, show-mentioned. But I have heard him say, what ing 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. [In his Prayers and Meditations there are frequent computations of this kind applied to the Scriptures. ought to be recorded to the honour of the present venerable master of that college, the Reverend William Adams, D. D. who was then very young4, and one of the junior fellows; that the mild but judicious expostulations of this worthy man, whose virtue awed him, and whose learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself, though I fear (said he) I was too proud to own it.' "I have heard from some of his contemporaries that he was generally seen lounging at the college gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the college discipline, which in his maturer years he so much extolled." [There are preserved in Pembroke College some of these themes, or exer ED. 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 enthusiast of learning will ever contemplate it with veneration. One day, 3 I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams, and while he was sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Panting 2, then master of the College, whom Dr. Johnson confirmed it. Bramston, in his he called "a fine Jacobite fellow," over-Man of Taste," has the same thought: We shall see many instances of a similar (not illaudable) disposition.-ED.] "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 assumed character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains, that all scholars are blockheads, on account of their scholarship.-J. BOSWELL. 4 [Dr. Adams was about two years older than Johnson, having been born in 1707. He became a Fellow of Pembroke in 1723, D. D. in 1756, and Master of the College in 1775.-HALL] |