Aetat. 21.] His regard for Pembroke College. 87 his fellow-collegians. But Dr. Adams told me that he contracted a love and regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last. A short time before his death he sent to that College a present of all his works, to be deposited in their library'; and he had thoughts of leaving to it his house at Lichfield; but his friends who were about him very properly dissuaded him from it, and he bequeathed it to some poor relations'. He took a pleasure in boasting of the many eminent men who had been educated at Pembroke. In this list are found the names of Mr. Hawkins the Poetry Professor', Mr. Shenstone, Sir William Blackstone, and others'; not forgetting the celebrated popular preacher, ' Dr. Hall [formerly Master of the College] says, 'Certainly not all.' CROKER. ''I would leave the interest of the fortune I bequeathed to a college to my relations or my friends for their lives. It is the same thing to a college, which is a permanent society, whether it gets the money now or twenty years hence; and I would wish to make my relations or friends feel the benefit of it;' post, April 17, 1778. Hawkins (Life, p. 582,) says that 'he meditated a devise of his house to the corporation of that city for a charitable use, but, it being freehold he said, “I cannot live a twelvemonth, and the last statute of Mortmain stands in my way." The same statute, no doubt, would have hindered the bequest to the College. * Garrick refused to act one of Hawkins's plays. The poet towards the end of a long letter which he signed,-'Your much dissatisfied humble servant,' said :—' After all, Sir, I do not desire to come to an open rupture with you. I wish not to exasperate, but to convince; and I tender you once more my friendship and my play.' Garrick Corres. ii. 8. See post, April 9, 1778. BOSWELL. See Nash's History of Worcestershire, vol. i. p. 529. 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 Mr. 88 A nest of singing-birds. [A.D. 1730. Mr. George Whitefield, of whom, though Dr. Johnson did not think very highly', it must be acknowledged that his eloquence was powerful, his views pious and charitable, his assiduity almost incredible; and, that since his death, the integrity of his character has been fully vindicated. Being himself a poet, Johnson was peculiarly happy in mentioning how many of the sons of Pembroke were poets; adding, with a smile of sportive triumph, 'Sir, we are a nest of sing. ing birds'.' 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. See post, Oct. 6, 1769, and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773. 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. 67 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. He Aetat. 21.] Dr. Taylor at Christ Church. 89 He was not, however, blind to what he thought the defects of his own College; and I have, from the information of Dr. Taylor, a very strong instance of that rigid honesty which he ever inflexibly preserved. Taylor had obtained his father's consent to be entered of Pembroke, that he might be with his school-fellow Johnson, with whom, though some years older than himself, he was very intimate. This would have been a great comfort to Johnson. But he fairly told Taylor that he could not, in conscience, suffer him to enter where he knew he could not have an able tutor. He then made inquiry all round the University, and having found that Mr. Bateman, of Christ Church, was the tutor of highest reputation, Taylor was entered of that College'. Mr. Bateman's lectures were so excellent, that Johnson used to come and get them at second-hand from Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared through them, he saw that this humiliating circumstance was perceived by the Christ Church men, and he came no more'. He was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation'. How must we feel when we read such an anecdote of Samuel Johnson! '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. 1. 'Si toga sordidula est et rupta calceus alter '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. 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 90 Johnson's worn-out Shoes. [A.D. 1730. His spirited refusal of an eleemosynary supply of shoes, arose, no doubt, from a proper pride. But, considering his ascetick disposition at times, as acknowledged by himself in his Meditations,' and the exaggeration with which some have treated the peculiarities of his character, I should not wonder to hear it ascribed to a principle of superstitious mortification; as we are told by Tursellinus, in his Life of St. Ignatius Loyola, that this intrepid founder of the order of Jesuits, when he arrived at Goa, after having made a severe pilgrimage through the Eastern desarts persisted in wearing his miserable shattered shoes, and when new ones were offered him rejected them as an unsuitable indulgence. The res angusta domi' prevented him from having the advantage of a complete academical education. The friend to whom he had trusted for support had deceived him. His debts in College, though not great, were increasing'; and his scanty remittances from Lichfield, which had all along been made with great difficulty, could be supplied no longer, his father having fallen into a state of insolvency. Compelled, 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 neg. lect 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. 1 'Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat Paraphrased by Johnson in his London, 'Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.' 2 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. 3 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. therefore, Aetat. 21.] Johnson leaves Oxford. 91 therefore, by irresistible necessity, he left the College in autumn, 1731, without a degree, having been a member of it little more than three years'. ' 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 Dr. |