Page:The Poetical Works of Samuel Johnson.pdf/6

Rh But very extraordinary must be that credulity, that can admit of these verses being the production of a child of such an early age; credulity however is relieved from the burthen of doubt by Johnson's having himself assured Mr. Boswell, that they were made by his father, who wished them to pass for his son's. He added, my father was a foolish old man, that is to say, foolish in talking of his children .'

Johnson was initiated in classical learning at the free school of his native city, under the tuition of Mr. Hunter, and having afterwards resided some timeat the house of his cousin Cornelius Ford, who assisted him in the classics, he was by his advice at the age of fifteen removed to the school of Stourbridge in Worcestershire, of which Mr. Wentworth was then master, whom he has described as 'a very able man, but an idle man; and to him unreasonably severe." Parson Ford he has described in his life of Tonten, as 'a clergyman at that time too well known, whose abilities, instead of furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and the dissolute, might have enbled him to excel amongst the virtuous and the wise .'

On the 31st of October 1728, he was entered a commoner of Pembroke College, Oxford, being then in his nineteenth year. Of his tutor Mr. Jourden, he gave the following account. He was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instruction; indeed I did not attend him much .” He had, however, a love and respect for Jourden , not for his literature, but for his worth. 'Whenever," said he, 'a young man becomes Jourden's pupil, he becomes his son.'

In the year 1730, Mr. Corbet, a young gentleman whom Johnson had accompanied to Oxford as a