The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol 3 | Page 5

man's son being hanged; but if a
man zealously enforces the probability that my own son will be hanged,
I shall certainly not be in a very good humour with him.' I added this
illustration, 'If a man endeavours to convince me that my wife, whom I
love very much, and in whom I place great confidence, is a
disagreeable woman, and is even unfaithful to me, I shall be very angry,
for he is putting me in fear of being unhappy.' MURRAY. 'But, Sir,
truth will always bear an examination.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, but it is
painful to be forced to defend it. Consider, Sir, how should you like,
though conscious of your innocence, to be tried before a jury for a
capital crime, once a week.'
We talked of education at great schools; the advantages and
disadvantages of which Johnson displayed in a luminous manner; but
his arguments preponderated so much in favour of the benefit which a
boy of good parts[36] might receive at one of them, that I have reason
to believe Mr. Murray was very much influenced by what he had heard
to-day, in his determination to send his own son to Westminster
school[37].--I have acted in the same manner with regard to my own
two sons; having placed the eldest at Eton, and the second at
Westminster. I cannot say which is best.[38] But in justice to both those
noble seminaries, I with high satisfaction declare, that my boys have
derived from them a great deal of good, and no evil: and I trust they

will, like Horace[39], be grateful to their father for giving them so
valuable an education.
I introduced the topick, which is often ignorantly urged, that the
Universities of England are too rich[40]; so that learning does not
flourish in them as it would do, if those who teach had smaller salaries,
and depended on their assiduity for a great part of their income.
JOHNSON. 'Sir, the very reverse of this is the truth; the English
Universities are not rich enough. Our fellowships are only sufficient to
support a man during his studies to fit him for the world, and
accordingly in general they are held no longer than till an opportunity
offers of getting away. Now and then, perhaps, there is a fellow who
grows old in his college; but this is against his will, unless he be a man
very indolent indeed. A hundred a year is reckoned a good fellowship,
and that is no more than is necessary to keep a man decently as a
scholar. We do not allow our fellows to marry, because we consider
academical institutions as preparatory to a settlement in the world. It is
only by being employed as a tutor, that a fellow can obtain any thing
more than a livelihood. To be sure a man, who has enough without
teaching, will probably not teach; for we would all be idle if we
could[41]. In the same manner, a man who is to get nothing by teaching,
will not exert himself. Gresham-College was intended as a place of
instruction for London; able professors were to read lectures gratis,
they contrived to have no scholars; whereas, if they had been allowed
to receive but sixpence a lecture from each scholar, they would have
been emulous to have had many scholars. Every body will agree that it
should be the interest of those who teach to have scholars; and this is
the case in our Universities[42]. That they are too rich is certainly not
true; for they have nothing good enough to keep a man of eminent
learning with them for his life. In the foreign Universities a
professorship is a high thing. It is as much almost as a man can make
by his learning; and therefore we find the most learned men abroad are
in the Universities[43]. It is not so with us. Our Universities are
impoverished of learning, by the penury of their provisions. I wish
there were many places of a thousand a-year at Oxford, to keep
first-rate men of learning from quitting the University.' Undoubtedly if
this were the case, Literature would have a still greater dignity and

splendour at Oxford, and there would be grander living sources of
instruction.
I mentioned Mr. Maclaurin's[44] uneasiness on account of a degree of
ridicule carelessly thrown on his deceased father, in Goldsmith's
History of Animated Nature, in which that celebrated mathematician is
represented as being subject to fits of yawning so violent as to render
him incapable of proceeding in his lecture; a story altogether
unfounded, but for the publication of which the law would give no
reparation[45]. This led us to agitate the question, whether legal redress
could be obtained, even when a man's deceased relation was
calumniated in a publication.