thought likely to seize the attention of her infant auditor, who was then in bed with her, she got up, and dressing him before the usual time, sent him directly to call a favourite workman in the house, to whom she knew he would communicate the conversation while it was yet impressed upon his mind. The event was what she wished[1], and it was to that method chiefly that he owed his uncommon felicity of remembering distant occurrences, and long past conversations.'
At the age of eighteen Dr. Johnson quitted school[2], and escaped from the tuition of those he hated or those he despised. I have heard him relate very few college adventures. He used to say that our best accounts of his behaviour there would be gathered from Dr. Adams[3] and Dr. Taylor[4], and that he was sure they would always tell the truth. He told me however one day, how, when he was first entered at the university, he passed a morning, in compliance with the customs of the place, at his tutor's chambers; but finding him no scholar, went no more. In about ten days after, meeting the same gentleman, Mr. Jordan, in the street, he offered to pass by without saluting him; but the tutor stopped, and enquired, not roughly neither, What he had been doing? 'Sliding on the ice,' was the reply; and so turned away with disdain[5]. He laughed very heartily at the recollection
- ↑ Boswell, who had also heard this story from Johnson, thus concludes: – 'She sent him to repeat it to Thomas Jackson, their man-servant; he not being in the way, this was not done.' Life, i. 38; ante, p. 135.
- ↑ According to Boswell he went to Stourbridge School at the age of fifteen, remained there little more than a year, and then spent two years at home before he entered college.' Ib. i. 49, 50, 56. This would make him in his nineteenth year when he entered; he was, however, in his twentieth. Ib. i. 58, n. 3.
- ↑ At that time one of the Fellows of Pembroke College; afterwards the Master. Ib. i. 59. A copy of his portrait has been lately hung in the Hall of the College.
- ↑ Johnson's schoolfellow and correspondent. Ib. i. 44.
- ↑ The tutor's name was Jorden. Johnson, in telling this story to Boswell, added: – 'I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor.' Ib. i. 60. See also i. 272. According to Hawkins (Life of Johnson, p. 9) Johnson once said to the same tutor: – 'Sir, you have sconced [fined] me twopence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny.' Mr. Falconer Madan, one of the Sub-Librarians of the Bodleian, informs me that twopence was the
