At length it was determined that he should go to Oxford, in October 1738, a gentleman of Shropshire promising aid in regard to the expense, which his father had not the means of defraying. On the eve of departure his old schoolmistress came to bid him farewell, bringing a present of gingerbread, which no doubt, he accepted in the same spirit in which it was offered, and paying him a compliment, which he ever after held in grateful remembrance. She said he was the best scholar she had ever had; and Johnson, who held the boy to be the man in miniature, valued the praise at a very high rate.

He was entered a commoner of Pembroke College on the 31st of October, his father accompanying him to Oxford, and being at great pains to have him introduced to the person who was to he his tutor. Old Johnson showed no small pride in his son's attainments, and with natural vanity boasted to the company present, on the evening of bis arrival, of his wondrous learning. The young sage's appearance struck them as odd. He sat silent till an opportunity occurred for a quotation, when ho struck in, and gave some idea of that extensive reading in which he had indulged when upbraided by his father for waste of time

Johnson never considered that he owed much to his tutor's instruction, which, perhaps, he did not sufficiently exert himself to profit by. Having waited on him the first day, he stayed away the next four. On the sixth, being asked why he had not attended, he gave as an excuse that he had been sliding in Christ-Church Meadow. He was not aware at the time, as he afterwards declared, that he had said anything disrespectful to his tutor, for whose personal character he ever expressed great esteem

The Fifth of November was, at that time, kept with great pomp and solemnity at Pembroke College, and the students were required to write something on the Gunpowder Plot. This Johnson neglected to do, producing, by way of apology, a few verses, which so pleased the tutor, that their author was requested to translate Pope's "Messiah" into Latin verse as a Christmas exercise He had, at school, given proofs of his poetic talent; he had also, while at Lichfield, written an epilogue for some young ladies who had proposed to act "The Distressed Mother," and he now set himself to the appointed task. The result was cheering. His rapidity and success gained him immense applause, and served much to raise him in the opinion of his College and the University.

While staying at Lichfield, during the vacation of

1729, he felt himself all hut overpowered with that peculiar melancholy which haunted him to his last days, and made vigorous efforts to shake it off by long walks and other expedients. But as they proved of no avail, he put into the hands of a medical man a statement of his case written in Latin. The physician was struck with its research and eloquence, and could not refrain from showing it to his friends, which so offended Johnson, that he never fully forgave what he regarded as the betrayal of confidence. From his ninth year he had been somewhat lax in so far as religion was concerned; but at Oxford he began to consider the matter seriously, and ever after was most exemplary in the fulfilment of his duties. At College his chief reading was Greek, and metaphysics his favourite study. He had a peculiar faculty of extracting the substantial and valuable portion of any book, without the labour of perusing it from beginning to end, which was all but necessary to a person of his irritable and impatient disposition acquiring so immense a fund of information as that which he ultimately possessed and made use of.

His poverty at this period became extreme; and it is related that, being in the habit of going to Christ Church to obtain from a friend the substance of some lectures then being delivered, his shoes were observed to be so much worn, that his feet appeared through them. Perceiving that this was noticed, he ceased from coming; and some of his well-wishers, having placed a new pair at his door, he manifested his proud independence of spirit by indignantly throwing them away. He felt that he was gifted in no ordinary degree, and hoped to fight his way by his literary abilities and learning. This consideration sustained him in all the privations which he endured at Oxford, but it could not supply the funds to maintain him there; and the gentleman to whose promises he had trusted having failed to make them good, he was compelled, in the autumn of 1731, from want of means, to cut short his career, to leave the University without a degree, and to return to his native place, with hardly any prospect of making even a decent livelihood. In the December of the same year his father died insolvent, and Johnson's gloom deepened into something like despair. Under these circumstances he accepted a situation as usher to a school at Market Bosworth, which he retained only for a few months, experiencing great misery all the time. He then went on a visit to an old schoolfellow and townsman, who had settled as a surgeon at Birmingham. Whilst there, he made the acquaintance of Mr. Warren, for whom he wrote his first prose work, an abridgement and translation of Lobo's "Voyage to Abyssinia," which was published in London. He likewise became acquainted with Mr. Porter, whose widow he married in 1736, when he opened a private academy at Lichfield, which proved an unsuccessful undertaking. In 1737 he removed to Loudon, and at first wrote chiefly for the "Gentleman's Maga-zine."His great works soon began to appear and arrest public attention. In time his name became famous, and it was his happiness always to improve as an author as he advanced in years. His fame as a critic, in which capacity he was far before his time, rests on his "Lives of the Poets," which, as he himself stated, should not be considered" as lives, but critical prefaces." His power is most con spicuously displayed in those of Cowley, Dryden, Addison, and Pope.

In 1762 his Majesty settled on him a pension; the degree of LL.D. was bestowed on him by Trinity College, Dublin; and the same distinction was afterwards conferred by his own University. He died on the 13th of December, 1784, in his seventy-fifth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey

Johnson arrived in London at a time when the condition of men of letters was at the very worst, and when they were obliged to endure every species of humiliation. The authors with whom he then mixed lived in a state of the utmost wretchedness. It is no small praise of him to say, that in the midst of poverty and despair he struggled on manfully, and appeared as the leader of another and more fortunate genera-tion, by whom he was treated with the utmost respect.

Moreover, he reached eminence not by any crooked paths, not by pandering to an impure public taste, but by intellect and abilities, which enabled him to subdue adverse fortune and bodily infirmity, to introduce a healthier and more moral tone into the literature of his day, and to leave a memorable example to succeeding aspirants to distinction in those fields wherein he displayed all the force of his great mind, and achieved his honourable triumphs