timely performance of his exercises, nor to have blemished them with inaccuracies; for "he was never known to have been corrected at school, unless for talking and diverting other boys from their business." Indeed, fuch was the fuperiority of his talents above thofe of his companions, that three of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was fometimes one, are faid to have affembled fubmiffively every morning, to carry him triumphantly upon their fhoulders to fchool. This ovation is believed by Mr. Bofwell to have been an honour paid to the early predominance of his intellectual powers alone; but they who remember what boys are, and who confider that Johnson's corporeal prowefs was by no means despicable, will be apt to suspect that the homage was enforced, at least as much by awe of the one, as by admiration of the other.

After having refided for fome months at the house of his coufin, Cornelius Ford, who affifted him in the claffics, he was, by his advice, at the age of fifteen, removed to the school of Stourbridge in Worcesterfhire, of which Mr. Wentworth was then mafter, whom he has defcribed as " a very able man, but an idle man, and to me unreasonably severe. Yet he taught me a great deal." He feems to have been there in the double capacity of a scholar and ufher, repaying the learning he acquired from his master, by the inftruction he gave to the younger boys. Parfon Ford he has defcribed in his "Life of Fenton," as " a clergyman at that time too well known, whofe abilities, inftead of furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and the diffolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wife."

He thus difcriminated to Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, his progress at his

two grammar-schools: "At one I learnt much in the school, but little from the mafter; in the other I learnt much from the mafter, but little in the fchool."

He remained at Stourbridge little more than a year, and then returned home, where he pursued his ftudies; but not upon any regular plan. Of this method of attaining knowledge, he feems ever after to have entertained a favourable opinion, and to have recommended it, not without reason, to young men, as the surest means of enticing them to learn: What he read was not works of mere amusement? ડેટ They were not voyages and travels, but all literature, all ancient authors, all manly; though but little Greek, only fome of Anacreon and Hefiod. But in this irregular manner, I had looked into a great many books, which were not commonly known at the univerfities, where they feldom read any books but what are put

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into their hands by their tutors; fo that when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams told me I was the best qualified for the univerfity that he had ever known come there."

He had already given several proofs of his poetical genius, both in his fchool exercises, and in other occafional compofitions. Of these Mr. Bofwell obtained a confiderable collection from Mr. Wentworth, the fon of his master, and Mr. Hector, his fchool-fellow; of which he has preferved fome tranflations from Homer, Virgil, Horace, &c. Unfortunately the communications of Mr. Wentworth are not diftinguished from those of Mr. Hector. Such a precaution would have enabled us to have diftinguished with certainty the efforts of the boy, from the production of riper years. His tranflation of the firft eclogue of Virgil, is not fo harmonious as that from the fixth book of Homer; and both are inferior in this respect to

thofe which he has made of the Odes of Horace. Indeed, in the ftyle and manner of verfification ufed in the laft, and in fome other of his juvenile pieces, he seems to have made little alteration in his more experienced days; and it must be added, that in point of smoothness, little improvement could have been made.

After a refidence of two years at home, Mr. Andrew Corbet, a gentleman of Shropshire, undertook to fupport him at Oxford, in the character of a companion to his fon, one of his school-fellows,

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though, in fact," fays Mr. Bofwell, upon the authority of Dr. Taylor, " he never received any affiftance whatever from that gentleman." He was accordingly entered a Commoner at Pembroke College, Oxford, October 31. 1728, being then in his nineteenth year.

On the night of his arrival at Oxford, his father, who had anxioufly accompa