James Boswell - THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON - All 6 Volumes in One Edition

[228] See Nash’s History of Worcestershire , vol. i. p. 529. BOSWELL. To the list should be added, Francis Beaumont, the dramatic writer; Sir Thomas Browne, whose life Johnson wrote; Sir James Dyer, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, Lord Chancellor Harcourt, John Pym, Francis Rous, the Speaker of Cromwell’s parliament, and Bishop Bonner. WRIGHT. Some of these men belonged to the ancient foundation of Broadgates Hall, which in 1624 was converted into Pembroke College. It is strange that Boswell should have passed over Sir Thomas Browne’s name. Johnson in his life of Browne says that he was ‘the first man of eminence graduated from the new college, to which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most can wish little better than that it may long proceed as it began.’ Johnson’s Works , vi. 476. To this list Nash adds the name of the Revd. Richard Graves, author of The Spiritual Quixote , who took his degree of B.A. on the same day as Whitefield, whom he ridiculed in that romance.

[229] See post , Oct. 6, 1769, and Boswell’s Hebrides , Aug. 15, 1773.

[230] In his Life of Shenstone he writes:—‘From school Shenstone was sent to Pembroke College in Oxford, a society which for half a century has been eminent for English poetry and elegant literature. Here it appears that he found delight and advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he took no degree.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 408. Johnson’s name would seem to have been in like manner continued for more than eleven years, and perhaps for the same reasons. ( Ante , p. 58 note.) Hannah More was at Oxford in June 1782, during one of Johnson’s visits to Dr. Adams. ‘You cannot imagine,’ she writes, ‘with what delight Dr. Johnson showed me every part of his own college…. After dinner he begged to conduct me to see the college; he would let no one show it me but himself. “This was my room; this Shenstone’s.” Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his college, “In short,” said he, “we were a nest of singing-birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket.” [It may be doubted whether he ever played.] He ran over with pleasure the history of the juvenile days he passed there. When we came into the Common Room, we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and hung up that very morning, with this motto: “And is not Johnson ours, himself a host;” under which stared you in the face, “From Miss More’s Sensibility ”’ Hannah More’s Memoirs , i. 261. At the end of ‘the ludicrous analysis of Pocockius’ quoted by Johnson in the Life of Edmund Smith are the following lines:—‘Subito ad Batavos proficiscor, lauro ab illis donandus. Prius vero Pembrochienses voco ad certamen poeticum.’ Smith was at Christ Church. He seems to be mocking the neighbouring ‘nest of singing-birds.’ Johnson’s Works , vii. 381.

[231] Taylor matriculated on Feb. 24, 1729. Mr. Croker in his note has confounded him with another John Taylor who matriculated more than a year later. Richard West, writing of Christ Church in 1735, says:—‘Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown.’ Gray’s Letters , ii. I.

[232]

‘Si toga sordidula est et rupta

calceus alter

Pelle patet.’

‘Or if the shoe be ript, or patches put.’

Dryden, Juvenal , iii. 149.

Johnson in his London , in describing ‘the blockhead’s insults,’ while he mentions ‘the tattered cloak,’ passes over the ript shoe. Perhaps the wound had gone too deep to his generous heart for him to bear even to think on it.

[233] ‘Yet some have refused my bounties, more offended with my quickness to detect their wants than pleased with my readiness to succour them.’ Rasselas , ch. 25. ‘His [Savage’s] distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him; in his lowest state he wanted not spirit to assert the natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress that insolence which the superiority of fortune incited; … he never admitted any gross familiarities, or submitted to be treated otherwise than as an equal…. His clothes were worn out; and he received notice that at a coffee-house some clothes and linen were left for him…. But though the offer was so far generous, it was made with some neglect of ceremonies, which Mr. Savage so much resented that he refused the present, and declined to enter the house till the clothes that had been designed for him were taken away.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 161 and 169.

[234]

‘Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat Res angusta domi.’

Juvenal, Sat . iii. 164.

Paraphrased by Johnson in his London , ‘Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.’

[235] Cambridge thirty-six years later neglected Parr as Oxford neglected Johnson. Both these men had to leave the University through poverty. There were no open scholarships in those days.

[236] Yet his college bills came to only some eight shillings a week. As this was about the average amount of an undergraduate’s bill it is clear that, so far as food went, he lived, in spite of Mr. Carlyle’s assertion, as well as his fellow-students.

[237] Mr. Croker states that ‘an examination of the college books proves that Johnson, who entered on the 31st October, 1728, remained there, even during the vacations, to the 12th December, 1729, when he personally left the college, and never returned—though his name remained on the books till 8th October, 1731.’ I have gone into this question at great length in my Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics , p. 329. I am of opinion that Mr. Croker’s general conclusion is right. The proof of residence is established, and alone established, by the entries in the buttery books. Now these entries show that Johnson, with the exception of the week in October 1729 ending on the 24th, was in residence till December 12, 1729. He seems to have returned for a week in March 1730, and again for a week in the following September. On three other weeks there is a charge against him of fivepence in the books. Mr. Croker has made that darker which was already dark enough by confounding, as I have shewn, two John Taylors who both matriculated at Christ Church. Boswell’s statement no doubt is precise, but in this he followed perhaps the account given by Hawkins. He would have been less likely to discover Hawkins’s error from the fact that, as Johnson’s name was for about three years on the College books, he was so long, in name at least, a member of the College. Had Boswell seen Johnson’s letter to Mr. Hickman, quoted by Mr. Croker (Croker’s Boswell , p. 20), he would at once have seen that Johnson could not have remained at college for a little more than three years. For within three years all but a day of his entrance at Pembroke, he writes to Mr. Hickman from Lichfield, ‘ As I am yet unemployed , I hope you will, if anything should offer, remember and recommend, Sir, your humble servant, Sam. Johnson.’

In Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (Aug. 15, 1773) there is a very perplexing passage bearing on Johnson’s residence at College. ‘We talked of Whitefield. He said he was at the same college with him, and knew him before he began to be better than other people.’ Now Johnson, as Boswell tells us, read this journal in manuscript. The statement therefore seems to be well-established indeed. Yet Whitefield did not matriculate till Nov. 7, 1732, a full year after Johnson, according to Boswell, had left Oxford. We are told that, when Johnson was living at Birmingham, he borrowed Lobo’s Abyssinia from the library of Pembroke College. It is probable enough that a man who frequently walked from Lichfield to Birmingham and back would have trudged all the way to Oxford to fetch the book. In that case he might have seen Whitefield. But Thomas Warton says that ‘the first time of his being at Oxford after quitting the University was in 1754’ ( post , under July 16, 1754).