pressions made upon his tender imagination by his mother, who continued her pious cares with assiduity, but, in his opinion, not with judgment. "Sunday," said he, "was a heavy day to me when I was a boy. (1) My mother confined me on that day, and made me read The Whole Duty of Man,' from a great part of which I could derive no instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of knowledge. A boy should be introduced to such books, by having his attention directed to the arrangement, to the style, and other excellencies of composition; that the mind being thus engaged by an amusing variety of objects may not grow weary.'

He communicated to me the following particulars upon the subject of his religious progress:-"I fell into an inattention to religion, or an indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so I was to go and find a seat in other churches; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit continued till my fourteenth year; and still I find a

(1) See some judicious remarks on the happiest mode of training the youthful mind, so that religious habits may be associated with cheerfulness, by Bishop Jebb (Sacred Literature, 7.). That amiable writer, when animadverting on this passage, is somewhat uncandid, if not unjust. Surely, those deficiencies in spiritual attainments, which Johnson himself lamented, as having been caused either by neglect or injudicious treatment in his boyhood, ought not to be included in the catalogue of his failings! - MARKLAND.

great reluctance to go to church. I then became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much think against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up 'Law's (1) Serious Call to a Holy Life,' expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational enquiry." (2) From this time forward religion was

On the

(1) William Law was born 1686, entered, in 1705, of Em. Coll. Camb., Fellow in 1711, and A. M. in 1712. accession of the Hanover family he refused the oaths. He was tutor to Mr. Gibbon's father, at Putney, and finally retired, with two pious ladies, Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Gibbon, the aunt of the historian, to a kind of conventual seclusion at King's Cliffe, his native place. He died in 1761.- CROKER.

(2) Mrs. Piozzi has given a strange fantastical account of the original of Dr. Johnson's belief in our most holy religion. "At the age of ten years his mind was disturbed by scruples of infidelity, which preyed upon his spirits, and made him very uneasy, the more so, as he revealed his uneasiness to none, being naturally (as he said) of a sullen temper, and reserved disposition. He searched, however, diligently, but fruitlessly, for evidences of the truth of revelation; and, at length, recollecting a book he had once seen [I suppose at five years old] in his father's shop, entitled "De Veritate Religionis," &c. he began to think himself highly culpable for neglecting such a means of information, and took himself severely to task for this sin, adding many acts of voluntary, and to others unknown, penance. The first opportunity which offered, of course, he seized the book with avidity; but, on examination, not finding himself scholar enough to peruse its contents, set his heart at rest; and not thinking to enquire whether there were any English books written on the subject, followed his usual amusements, and considered his conscience as lightened of a crime. He redoubled his diligence to learn the language that contained the inform ation he most wished for; but from the pain which guilt [namely, having omitted to read what he did not understand had given him, he now began to deduce the soul's immortality

the predominant object of his thoughts; though, with the just sentiments of a conscientious Christian, he lamented that his practice of its duties fell far short of what it ought to be.

This instance of a mind such as that of Johnson being first disposed, by an unexpected incident, to think with anxiety of the momentous concerns of eternity, and of "what he should do to be saved," may for ever be produced in opposition to the superficial and sometimes profane contempt that has been thrown upon those occasional impressions which it is certain many Christians have experienced: though it must be acknowledged that weak minds, from an erroneous supposition that no man is in a state of grace who has not felt a particular conversion, have, in some cases, brought a degree of ridicule upon them ; a ridicule, of which it is inconsiderate or unfair to make a general application.

How seriously Johnson was impressed with a sense of religion, even in the vigour of his youth, appears from the following passage in his minutes kept by way of diary:-" Sept. 7. 1736. I have this day en

La sensation of pain in this world being an unquestionable proof of existence in another], which was the point that belief first stopped at; and from that moment resolving to be a Christian, became one of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever produced." (Anecdotes, p. 17.) This is one of the numerous misrepresentations of this lively lady, which it is worth while to correct; for if credit should be given to such a childish, irrational, and ridiculous statement of the foundation of Dr. Johnson's faith in Christianity, how little credit would be due to it! Mrs. Piozzi seems to wish, that the world should think Dr. Johnson also under the influence of that easy logic, "Stet pro ratione voluntas."

tered upon my 28th year. Mayest thou, O God, enable me, for Jesus Christ's sake, to spend this in such a manner, that I may receive comfort from it at the hour of death, and in the day of judgment ! Amen."

The particular course of his reading while at Oxford, and during the time of vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced. (1) Enough has been said of his irregular mode of study. He told me, that from his earliest years he loved to read poetry, but hardly ever read any poem to an end; that he read Shakspeare at a period so early, that the speech of the ghost in Hamlet terrified him when he was alone; that Horace's Odes were the compositions in which he took most delight (2), and it was long before he liked his Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of which he was the most fond was metaphysics, but he had not read much, even in that

(1) He had little relish for mathematical learning, and was content with such a degree of knowledge in physics, as he could not but acquire in the ordinary exercises of the place: his fortunes and circumstances had determined him to no particular course of study, and were such as seemed to exclude him from every one of the learned professions. - HAWKINS.

(2) Though some of his odes are easy, and in what he no doubt thought the Horatian style, we shall see that to Miss Carter he confessed a fondness for Martial, and his epigrams certainly were influenced by that partiality. Dr. Hall has a small volume of hendecasyllabic poetry, entitled "Poetæ Rusticantis Literatum Otium, sive Carmina Andreæ Francisci Landesii. Lond. 1713;" which belonged to Johnson, and some peculiarities of the style of these verses may be traced in his college compositions. CROker.

way. I always thought that he did himself injustice in his account of what he had read, and that he must have been speaking with reference to the vast portion of study which is possible, and to which a few scholars in the whole history of literature have attained; for when I once asked him whether a person, whose name I have now forgotten, studied hard, he answered, "No, Sir. I do not believe he studied hard. I never knew a man who studied hard. I conclude, indeed, from the effects, that some men have studied hard, as Bentley and Clarke." Trying him by that criterion upon which he formed his judgment of others, we may be absolutely certain, both from his writings and his conversation, that his reading was very extensive. Dr. Adam Smith (1), than whom few were better judges on this subject, once observed to me, that " Johnson knew more books than any man alive." He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end. He had, from the irritability of his constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read or wrote. A certain apprehension arising from novelty, made him write his first exercise at college twice over; but he

(1) Boswell might have selected, if not a better judge, at least better authority; for Adam Smith had comparatively little intercourse with Johnson, and the sentence pronounced is one which could only be justified by an intimate literary acquaintance. But Boswell's nationality (though he fancied he had quite subdued it) inclined him to quote the eminent Scottish professor. We shall see many instances of a similar (not illaudable) disposition.-CROKER.