Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/183

 Anecdotes.

��of his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with wonderful acquiescence, and a gentleness that, whenever he thought of it, astonished himself. He told me too, that when he made his first declamation, he wrote over but one copy, and that coarsely; and having given it into the hand of the tutor who stood to receive it as he passed, was obliged to begin by chance and continue on how he could, for he had got but little of it by heart ; so fairly trusting to his present powers for immediate supply, he finished by adding astonishment to the applause of all who knew how little was owing to study x. A prodigious risque, however, said some one : ' Not at all (exclaims Johnson), no man I suppose leaps at once into deep water who does not know how to swim.'

I doubt not but this story will be told by many of his biographers, and said so to him when he told it me on the j8th of July 1773 2. ' And who will be my biographer (said he),

��sconce in the middle ages. Johnson, in his Dictionary, calls sconce ' a low word which ought not to be retained.'

Adam Smith, who entered Oxford eleven years after Johnson left it, says : ' If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an un pleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense. It must, too, be un pleasant to him to observe that the greater part of his students desert his lectures ; or, perhaps, attend upon them with plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision.' Wealth of Nations, ed. 1811, iii. 171. 'No discipline,' he adds, 'is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending, as is well known wherever any such lectures are given.' Ib. p. 172.

1 He told Windham the same story. Letters, ii. 440. He was more careful with ' his first exercise

��at College,' for a ' certain apprehen sion arising from novelty made him write it twice over.' Life, i. 71 ; iv.

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2 Even so early as this he knew that Boswell intended to write his life. On April 1 1 of this year Bos- well records : ' I again solicited him to communicate to me the particulars of his early life. He said, " You shall have them all for two-pence. I hope you shall know a great deal more of me before you write my life." ' Ib. ii. 217. See also ib. i. 25 ; ii. 166. In the autumn of the same year he read the following passage in Bos- well's Journal : ' The Sunday even ing that we sat by ourselves at Aber deen, I asked him several particulars of his life, from his early years, which he readily told me ; and I wrote them down before him. This day I proceeded in my inquiries, also writing them in his presence. I have them on detached sheets. I shall collect authentick materials for THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. ;

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