Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/132

128 good Stratford Rector would prefer engaging in the new institution in the metropolis of the British colonies than await the developments of one in New York. Johnson had sought upon this latter the advice and counsel of the good George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, whose few years residence in this new country had endeared him to all here who were his friends or correspondents. The Bishop's wise and friendly reply of 23 August, 1749, reached Stratford after the visit of the Philadelphia gentlemen, and Dr. Johnson enclosed it to Franklin, but his letter of inclosure is not preserved. The entire correspondence is given in the Appendix, as no mere extracts, for which the text can find a place here, can offer a just estimate of the communications which these two worthy men had one with the other on the subject.

In age, Samuel Johnson was ten years the senior of Benjamin Franklin, being born in Guilford, Connecticut, 14 October, (o. s.) 1696. At ten years of age his first schooling was under the tuition of Jared Eliot, a Yale graduate of 1706; although this tutelage continued but a year, as Eliot then entered the ministry and settled at Killingworth, yet the latter's affection for his pupil ripened into friendly relations in after life; and as Eliot and Franklin became correspondents the latter must have heard through him of his former pupil. Johnson graduated at Yale College when it was yet at Saybrook, in 1714, and following the example of his early preceptor he began teaching a school of the higher order in his native town. When the Trustees decided in 1716 to move the College to New Haven, Johnson was elected one of the Tutors, and he was for a time the only tutor in the new location, being joined in 1718 by his classmate Daniel Brown, the animosities engendered by the removal of the College keeping apart for some years the contending factions created by this removal. The controversies terminated in 1719, and Governor Yale's benefactions in money and books to the institution won for it the name it has honestly borne in the long years since. In March, 1720, he was ordained a Congregational Minister, but even at that moment, had written a paper which yet remains in manuscript entitled