Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett | Page 2

in the shadow of Boswell, the best of all biographers, and not in
that of Johnson, that we feel ourselves at present cowering. Yet we
must try to give a rapid account of the leading incidents in Johnson's
life, as well as a short estimate of his vast, rugged genius.
Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, Staffordshire, on the 18th of

September 1709, and was baptized the same day. His father was
Michael Johnson, a bookseller and stationer, and his mother, Sarah
Ford. Samuel was the first-born of the family. Nathaniel, who died in
his twenty-fifth year, was the second and the last. Johnson very early
began to manifest both his peculiar prejudices and his peculiar powers.
When a mere child, we see him in Lichfield Cathedral, perched on his
father's shoulders, gazing at Sacheverel, the famous Tory preacher. We
hear him, about the same time, roaring to his mother, who had given
him, a minute before, a collect in the Common Prayer-Book to get by
heart as his day's task,--"Mother, I can say it already!" His first teacher,
Dame Oliver, a widow, thought him, as she well might, the best scholar
she ever had. From her he passed into the hands of one Tom Brown, an
original, who once published a spelling-book, and dedicated it "to the
Universe!"--without permission, we presume. He began to learn Latin
first with a Mr Hawkins, and then with a Mr Hunter, head-master of
Lichfield,--a petty tyrant, although a good scholar, under whom, to use
Gay's language, Johnson was
"Lash'd into Latin by the tingling rod."
At the age of fifteen, he was transferred to Stourbridge school, and to
the care of a Mr Wentworth, who "taught him a great deal." There he
remained twelve months, at the close of which he returned home, and
for two years lived in his father's house, in comparative idleness,
loitering in the fields, and reading much, but desultorily. In 1728, being
flattered with some promises of aid from a Shropshire gentleman,
named Corbet, which were never fulfilled, he went to Oxford, and was
entered as a commoner in Pembroke College. His father accompanied
and introduced him to Dr Adams, and to Jorden, who became his tutor,
recommending his son as a good scholar and a poet. Under Jorden's
care, however, he did little except translate Pope's "Messiah" into Latin
verse,--a task which he performed with great rapidity, and so well, that
Pope warmly commended it when he saw it printed in a miscellany of
poems. About this time, the hypochondriac affection, which rendered
Johnson's long life a long disease, began to manifest itself. In the
vacation of 1729, he was seized with the darkest despondency, which
he tried to alleviate by violent exercise and other means, but in vain. It

seems to have left him during a fit of indignation at Dr Swinfen (a
physician at Lichfield, who, struck by the elegant Latinity of an
account of his malady, which the sufferer had put into his hands,
showed it in all directions), but continued to recur at frequent intervals
till the close of his life. His malady was undoubtedly of a maniacal cast,
resembling Cowper's, but subdued by superior strength of will--a
Bucephalus, which it required all the power of a Johnson to back and
bridle. In his early days, he had been piously inclined, but after his
ninth year, fell into a state of indifference to religion. This continued
till he met, at Oxford, Law's "Serious Call," which, he says,
"overmatched" and compelled him to consider the subject with
earnestness. And whatever, in after years, were the errors of his life, he
never, from that hour, ceased to have a solemn sense of the verities of
the Christian religion.
At Oxford, he paid little attention to his regular tasks, but read, or
rather devoured, all the books he could lay his hands on, and began to
display his unrivalled conversational powers, being often seen
"lounging about the college gates, with a circle of young students
around him, whom he was entertaining with wit, keeping from their
studies, and sometimes rousing to rebellion against the college
discipline." He was, at this time, so miserably poor, that his shoes were
worn to tatters, and his feet appeared through them, to the scandal of
the Christ-Church men, when he occasionally visited their college.
Some compassionate individual laid a new pair at his door, which he
tossed away with indignation. At last,--his debts increasing, his
supplies diminishing, and his father becoming bankrupt,--he was, in
autumn 1731, compelled to leave college without a degree. In the
December of the same year his father died.
Perhaps there was not now in broad Britain a person apparently more
helpless and hopeless than this tall, half-blind, half-mad, and wholly
miserable lad, with ragged shoes, and no