Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/24

 Prayers and Meditations.

��Julii 1 6 [? 1732]- Bosvortiam pedes petii r.

5.

Friday, August 27 [1734], i at night. This day I have trifled away, except that I have attended the school in the morning. I read to-night in Rogers's sermons. To-night I began the breakfast law (sic) anew 2.

6.

Sept. 7, 1736 3. I have this day entered upon my a8th year. Mayest thou, O God, enable me for Jesus Christ's sake

��may be very remote. I now therefore see that I must make my own fortune. Meanwhile, let me take care that the powers of my mind may not be debili tated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act.' Ib. Johnson left his father's free hold house in the possession of his mother till her death in 1759. Letters, i. 19, n. i, 82. He had been driven from Oxford by his poverty ; no public maintenance had been provided there for the poor scholar, though ' he had gained great applause ' by his Latin version of Pope's Messiah. Two years after he entered upon his in heritance of twenty pounds, twenty thousand pounds of public money were spent on the voyage of the Princess Royal to the Hague. Lord Hervey's Memoirs, i. 437.

1 Life, i. 84. Johnson went on foot to Market-Bosworth to fill the office of usher in the school of that town. Jonathan Boucher, who became usher in St. Bees' School in 1756, writes: ' My salary from the head-master was ^10 a year ; and entrances and cock- pennies amounted to as much more. The second year I got nearly .30.' Letters of Radcliffe and James, Pre face, p. vii. 'The cock-penny was a customary payment at Shrovetide,

��formerly made to the schoolmaster in certain schools in the north of Eng land. Originally applied to defray the expense of cock-fighting or cock- throwing.' New Eng. Diet. ii. 576. W. B. Scott, who was born in 1811, describing his childhood near Edin burgh, says : ' Our uncle still pos sessed the Bible his game-cock had won at the breaking-up time on the floor of the school.' Life of W. B. Scott, 1892, i. 30.

2 Hawkins's /tf^wz, p. 163. John son stayed only a few months at Market-Bosworth. In 1734 he was again living in Lichfield. Rogers's sermons were probably Sermons at Boyle's Lectures, 1727, by the Rev. John Rogers, D.D.

3 He was born on Sept. 7, Old Style Sept. 18, New Style. The New Style was introduced on Sept. 3, 1752, which day was called the 1 4th. Unless that year he advanced his birthday and kept it on the i8th he did not observe the anniversary. With his dislike of keeping the day, he was perhaps glad to have it for once disappear. On Jan. I, 1753, he notes down that he shall for the future use the New Style. Post, P. 13-

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