very nied him, found means to have him introduced to Mr. Jorden, Fellow of Pembroke, who was to be his tutor. According to Dr. Adams, who was prefent, he seemed full of the merits of his fon, and told the company he was a good fcholar and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His figure and manner seemed ftrange to them; but he behaved modeftly, and fat filent, till, upon fomething which occurred in the course of conversation, he suddenly struck in, and quoted Macrobius; and this gave the first impreffion of that extenfive reading in which he had indulged himself. Of his tutor, Mr. Jorden, he gave Mr. Bofwell the following account: a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his inftruction. Indeed, I did not attend him much." He had, however, a love and respect for Jorden, not for his literature, but for his worth. "Whenever (faid he) a young 66 He was man becomes Jorden's pupil, he becomes his fon." The fifth of November was at that time kept with great folemnity at Pembroke College, and exercises upon the gunpowder plot were required. Johnfon neglected to perform his. To apologize for his neglect, he gave in a fhort copy of verses, intituled Somnium, containing a common thought, "that the mufe had come to him in his fleep, and whispered that it did not become him to write on fuch fubjects as politics; he fhould confine himself to humbler themes;" but the verfification was truly Virgilian. Having given fuch a fpecimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr. Jorden to translate Pope's Meffiab into Latin hexameter verse, as a Christmas exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in fo masterly a manner, that he obtained great applaufe from it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his college and indeed of all the univerfity. Pope, impelled by gratitude and taste, perhaps not unaffifted by vanity, is reported to have faid concerning it, "that the author would leave it a question for pofterity, whether his or mine be the original?" It was first printed by his father, without his knowledge; and afterwards inferted in a Miscellany," pub 66 lished by fubfcription at Oxford, in 1731, by Mr. John Husbands, Fellow of Pembroke College. The particular courfe of his reading while at Oxford, and during the time of vacation which he paffed at home, cannot be traced. From his earliest years he loved to read poetry and romances of chivalry. He read Shakspeare at a period fo early, that the fpeech of the ghost in "Hamlet" terrified him when he was alone. Horace's odes were the compofi tions he most liked in early life; but it was long before he could relish his fatires and epiftles. He told Mr. Boswell, what he read folidly at Oxford was Greek, not the Grecian hiftorians, but Homer and Euripides, and now and then a little epigram; that the study of which he was most fond was metaphyfics; but he had not read much even in that We may be abfolutely certain, however, both from his writings and his conversation, that his reading was very extenfive. He projected a common-place book to the extent of fix folio volumes, but according to Sir John Hawkins, the blank leaves far exceeded the written ones. way. In 1729, while at Litchfield, during the college vacation, the "morbid melancholy" which was lurking in his conftitution, gathered fuch ftrength as to afflict him in a dreadful manner. He was overwhelmed with an horrible hypocondria, with perpe 66 tual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience, and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, that made existence mifery. He fancied himself seized by, or approaching to infanity; in conformity with which notion he applied, when he was at the very worft, to his godfather, Dr. Swinfen, phyfician in Litchfield, and put into his hand a ftate of his cafe, written in Latin; "which fhowed," as Mr. Bofwell expreffes it, an uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgment." That he should have fuppofed himself approaching to infanity, at the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary foundness and vigour of judgment, is lefs ftrange than that Mr. Boswell should confider the vigour of fancy, which he difplayed on fuch a fubject, a proof of his fanity. It is a common effect of melancholy to make those who are afflicted with it imagine that they are actually suffering |