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."1 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 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. 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." 4

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

1 Athen. Oxon. edit. 1721, i. 627.- BosWELL.

? There are, as Dr. Hall informed me, several errors in Mr. Boswell's account of Johnson's college life. He either did not consult Dr. Adams, or must have misunderstood Dr. Adams's information. There are at Pembroke two tutors for the whole college, so that Mr. Jorden was no more the tutor of Johnson than of any other student, and Johnson was equally the pupil of the other college tutor. But a more serious error is that as to the period of Johnson's actual residence at Oxford, which pervades, and, in some important points, falsifies Boswell's narrative. Boswell assumes that the years 1729, 1730, and 1731 were all spent with only the usual interruption of the college vacations at Oxford, and be adapts all his subsequent statements, and several anecdoces, to this hypothesis; but an examination of the college books proves that Johnson, who entered on the 31st October, 172, remained there, even during the vacations, to the 12th December, 1729, when he personally left the college, and Bever returned though his name remained on the books till 8th October, 1781. This abrupt termination of his residence was no doubt occasioned by the hypochondriacal illness mentioned (antè, p. 9. n. 1. and post, p. 14.), and it is probable that his name remained on the books in the hope that his health and his means might enable him to return. His health, we shall see, mended, but the pecuniary resources failed. If Johnson had remained in college in 1730, there were two scholarships to which he would bave been eligible, and one of which Dr. Hall did not doubt that he would have sbtained. But see, in his visit to Oxford, in 1754, his a opinion that it was fortunate for his literary character that he had been forced out of the routine of a college life. -CROKER.

* Oxford, March 20. 1776.- BOSWELL.

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 tures, and also the lectures in the College Hall, very regularly. BOSWELL When he related this anecdote to Mrs.

-

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 5 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. 6 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.

It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of strong approbation. 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 1731.7 In that Miscellany, Johnson's Translation of the Messiah appeared, with this modest motto from Scaliger's Poetics, "Ex alieno ingenio poeta, ex suo tantum versificator."

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 satisfied with

Piozzi, he laughed very heartily at his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with a gentleness that, whenever he thought of it, astonished himself. Hawkins, also says, "that he would oftener risk the payment of a small 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 sconced me twopence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny.' I do not much credit this early specimen of Johnson's antithetical style, and indeed I believe, with Boswell, that all these instances of insurbordination and insolence were very much exaggerated, for he told the same anecdotes to Tom Warton at Oxford in a very different tone, and confessed that he expected his tutor's rebuke with a "beating heart." It would seem as if Johnson had been induced, by the too obsequious deference of his later admirers, to assign to his youthful character a little more of sturdy dignity than, when his recollection was fresher and his ear unspoiled by flattery, he assumed to Mr. Warton. (See post, under July 1754.) - CROKER.

5 Johnson used to say, "He scarcely knew a noun from an adverb."- NICHOLS. Johnson told Mr. Windham that he was so ignorant as to say that the Ramei (the disciples of Ramus) were so called from ramus, a bough. CROKER.

6 This must have been the Christmas (1728) immediately following his entering into college; for he never spent a second Christmas at Pembroke. - CROKER.

7 John Husbands was a contemporary of Johnson at Pembroke College, having been admitted a Fellow and A.M. in 1726. Hawkins says that the poem having been shown to Pope, by a son of Dr. Arbuthnot, then a gentleman commoner 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.” But see Pope's own statement, post, p. 41. I do not find that it was again published till twenty-one years later, when it appeared in the Gent. Mag. for 1752 with Johnson's name.CROKER.

the just and discriminative eulogy pronounced
upon it by my friend Mr. Courtenay.
"And with like ease his vivid lines assume
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 hitch in pilfer'd lays,
Then with mosaic art the piece combine,
And boast the glitter of each dulcet line:
Johnson adventur'd boldly to transfuse
His vigorous sense into the Latin muse;
Aspir'd to shine 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.
Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands,
To bloom a while, factitious 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 fostering soil;
Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins,
And grows a native of Britannia's plains.'

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 3 of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery.

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. How wonderful, how unsearchable are the ways of God! Johnson, who was blessed 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 that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.

Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this

See post, 6 Sept. 1773, the Ode to Mrs. Thrale, written in Sky - CROKER. Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson, by John Courtenay, Esq. M.P.- BOSWELL. 3 A mistake. See antè, p. 13. n. 1.- CROKER.

4 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 part of his life in London; in the literary circles of which he was generally known, and highly esteemed.

He

disorder, strove to overcome it by forcible exertions. 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 applied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Lichfield, his god-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 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.

But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an HYPOCHONDRIAC, was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the title of "The English Malady." 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 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. 5 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 expanded it thus: "If," said he, "a man tells

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. He died Dec. 12. 1795.- CROKER.

5 Chapter 44. "On the dangerous Prevalence of Imagination;" in which Johnson no doubt relates his own sensations. -CROKER.

6 Jerome David Gaubius was born at Heidelberg, in 1705. He died in 1780, leaving several works of considerable value. A translation into English of his "Institutiones Pathologiæ Medicinalis" appeared in 1779. — WRIGHT.

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 himn 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 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 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 it with upon unfair very aggravation.'

Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt in its full extent, but many 2 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 noble sentiment~~

"Igneus est ollis vigor et cælestis origo."

66

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 excellencies 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 reparation5, 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

the author of the best French comedy after Molière, was atrabílious, and Molière himself saturnine. Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all, more or less, affected by it occasionally. It was the prelude to the more awful malady of Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart; but it by no means follows that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate This list like theirs." Byron, vol. vi. p. 396.- WRIGHT. of superior intellects liable to constitutional, and, as I believe, hereditary disorder, might be largely augmented, and would, in my opinion, include Lord Byron himself.-CROKER, 1846. En. vi. 730.-C.

4

"in them we trace

The fiery vigour of a heavenly race."

5 Johnson's parish church, St. Mary's, being in a decayed state, was taken down in 1716, and the present structure was finished and opened in 1721. How important is this otherwise trivial circumstance towards enforcing the habit' of church-going! The accidental interruption of this duty shook for a time Johnson's faith, and was felt even in his maturer days.- CROKER.

6 William Law was born 1686, entered, in 1705, of Em. On Coll. Cambridge, Fellow in 1711, and A. M. in 1712. the accession of the Hanover family he refused the oaths. He was tutor to Mr. Gibbon's father, at Putney, and finally retired, with two pious ladies, Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Gibbon, the aunt of the historian, to a kind of conventual seclusion at King's Cliffe, his native place. He died in 1761. CROKER.

--

earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational enquiry." 99 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 unexpected 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.

How seriously Johnson was impressed with a sense of religion, even in the vigour of his youth, appears from the following passage in his minutes kept by way of diary:-"Sept. 7. 1736. I have this day entered upon my 28th year. Mayest thou, O God, 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 judgment! Amen."

The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the time of vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced.3 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

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 disposition. 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,' &c. he began to think himself highly culpable for neglecting such 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 examination, not finding himself scholar enough to peruse its contents, set his heart at rest; and not thinking to enquire whether there were any English books written on the subject, followed his usual amusements, and considered his conscience as lightened of a crime. He redoubled his diligence to learn the language that contained the information he most wished for; but from the pain which guilt [namely, having omitted to read what he did not understand] had given him, he now began to deduce the soul's immortality [a sensation of pain in this world being an unquestionable proof of existence in another], which was the point that belief first stopped at; and from that moment resolving to be a Christian, became one of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever produced." (Anecdotes, p. 17.) This is one of the numerous misrepresentations of this lively lady, which it is worth while to correct; for if credit should be given to such a childish, irrational, and ridiculous statement of the founda

alone; 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 and Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of which he was the most fond was metaphysics, 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 judgment 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. He had, from the irritability of his constitution, 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; 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.6

5

Yet he appears, from his early notes or memorandums in my possession, to have at

tion of Dr. Johnson's faith in Christianity, how little credit would be due to it! Mrs. Piozzi seems to wish, that the world should think Dr. Johnson also under the influence of that easy logic, "Stet pro ratione voluntas."- BOSWELL. 2 He was then married and resident at Edial. — CROKER. 3 See antè, p. 13. n. 1.

4 Though two or three of his pieces are easy, and in what he perhaps thought the Horatian style, we shall see that to Miss Carter he confessed a fondness for Martial, and his epigrams certainly savour of that partiality. Dr. Hall had a small volume of hendecasyllabic poetry, entitled Pocta Rusticantis Lite. ratum 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.- CROKER.

5 Boswell might have selected, if not a better judge, at least a better authority; for Adam Smith had but a slight acquaintance with Johnson, and the judgment pronounced by Smith is one which could only be justified by an intimate literary intercourse. But Boswell's nationality inclined him to quote the eminent Scottish professor. We shall see many instances of a similar partiality - not illaudable in Boswell, but which the reader ought to bear in mind.- CROKER.

6 He told Dr. Burney, that he never wrote any of his works that were printed, twice over. Dr. Burney's wonder at seeing several pages of his Lives of the Poets, in manuscript, with scarce a blot or erasure, drew this observation from him. MALONE. But he made large corrections in the second edition of the Rambler, and in the third edition of the Lives of the Poets the variations were so considerable, as to be printed in a separate pamphlet, for the use of former purchasers.- CROKER.

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 handwriting the number of lines in each of two of Euripides's Tragedies, of the Georgics of Virgil, of the first six books of the Eneid, of Horace's Art of Poetry, of three of the books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, of some parts of Theocritus, and of the tenth Satire of Juvenal; and a table, showing 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.1

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, while he was sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Panting2, then master of the College, whom he called "a fine Jacobite fellow," overheard him uttering this soliloquy in his strong emphatic 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. And I'll mind my business. For an Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads."3

Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, " was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicsome 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

1 Soin the Prayers and Meditations: “ 1764. — I resolve to study the Scriptures; I hope in the original languages. Six hundred and forty verses every Sunday will nearly comprise the Scriptures in a year. The plan which I formed for reading the Scriptures was to read six hundred verses in the Old Testament, and two hundred in the New, every week."- pp. 57.99. It appears by a subsequent passage that he meant to read the Old Testament in the Septuagint version. There is no trace of his having attempted Hebrew. - CROKER.

↑ Dr. Matthew Panting died 12th Feb. 1739.-CROKER. 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 assumed character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains, that all scholars are blockheads, on account of their scholarship.-J. BOSWELL, jun. 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.CROKER.

3 There are preserved, in Pembroke College, some of these themes, or exercises, both in prose and verse: the following, though the two first lines are awkward, has more point and pleasantry than his epigrams usually have. It may be surmised that the college beer was at this time indifferent:Mea nec Falernæ

Temperant vites, neque Formiani

Pocula colles."-HOR. 1 Od. 20. 10.

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 frolic. 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."

The Bishop of Dromore observes in a letter to me, "The pleasure he took in vexing the tutors and fellows has been often mentioned. But I have heard him say, what 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 young, 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."5

He very early began to attempt keeping notes or memorandums, by way of a diary of his life. I find, in a parcel of loose leaves, the following spirited resolution to contend against his natural indolence: "Oct. 1729. Desidia valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus. I bid farewell to Sloth, being resolved henceforth not to listen to her syren strains." I have also in my possession a few leaves of another Libellus, or little book, entitled ANNALES, in which some of the early particulars of his history are registered in Latin. I do not find that he formed any close intimacies with his fellow-collegians. But Dr. Adams told me, that he contracted a love and