Two hundred years ago it was not easy for a poor country bookseller to send his son to Oxford; and it is probable that it was only with the help of friends that old Mr Johnson was able to pay his son's expenses at the university.

However that may be, the name of Samuel Johnson was entered in the books of Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1728.

He had at least one parting gift, for good Dame Oliver, his first teacher, hearing that he was about to go, "came to take leave of him [and] brought him, in the simplicity of her kindness, a present of gingerbread, and said, he was the best scholar she ever had." Boswell further tells us that Johnson "delighted in mentioning this early compliment: adding, with a smile, that 'this was as high a proof of his merit as he could conceive.'"

Besides his gingerbread, however, Johnson took with him a good knowledge of books. "I had looked" he said "into a great many books, which were not commonly known at the Universities, where they seldom read any books but what are put into their hands by their tutors; so that when I came to Oxford, Dr Adams told me I was the best qualified for the University that he had ever known come there."

And indeed he quickly showed himself to be more learned than the ordinary "freshman."

Nowadays, when a father takes his son for a first interview with a college tutor, it is not usual for the boy to break into the conversation with a quotation from one of the less-known Latin authors.

This is Boswell's story of Johnson's arrival at Oxford:

"His father, who had anxiously accompanied him, found means to have him introduced to Mr Jorden, who was to be his tutor.... His father seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the company he was a good scholar, and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved modestly, and sat silent, till upon something which occurred in the course of conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted Macrobius; and thus he gave the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself."

Johnson had no great opinion of Mr Jorden as a scholar:

"He was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instructions. Indeed, I did not attend him much. The first day after I came to college I waited upon him, and then stayed away four. On the sixth, Mr Jorden asked me why I had not attended. I answered I had been sliding in Christ Church meadow. And this I said with as much nonchalance as I am now talking to you. I had no notion I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor."

Johnson's rooms were on the second floor over the gateway of Pembroke College. The tower itself has been much altered, but the visitor to Oxford can see the rooms pretty much as they were in Johnson's day. Elsewhere in the college he may examine (or "contemplate with veneration," as Boswell would have done) many Johnsonian relics—his writing-desk and tea-pot among them.

From what we already know of Johnson's boyhood, we cannot picture him as a lively undergraduate; for poverty and ill-health make it difficult for a young man to enjoy life with his fellows, and Johnson suffered from both.

A schoolfellow of Johnson, named Taylor, had come up to Christ Church, where one of the tutors, Mr Bateman, had a high reputation:

"Mr Bateman's lectures were so excellent, that Johnson used to come and get them at second-hand from Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared through them, he saw that this humiliating circumstance was perceived by the Christ Church men, and he came no more. He was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation."

"How must we feel" adds the faithful Boswell "when we read such an anecdote of Samuel Johnson!"

Nor had his health improved. Here is an account of him at the end of his first year at Oxford:

"While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with ... perpetual irritation, fretfulness and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved ... he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock."

We are rather surprised, then, to read that he was at Oxford "caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicksome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life."

"This" says Boswell "is a striking proof of the fallacy of appearances, and how little any of us know of the real internal state even of those whom we see most frequently; for the truth is, that he was then depressed by poverty, and irritated by disease. When I mentioned to him this account as given me by Dr Adams, he said 'Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority.'"

Johnson was too poor to complete his course of study and left Oxford in 1731 without the degree of Bachelor of Arts. But though he had no degree, he had gained much from the University. He had widened his knowledge of books, reading mostly Greek and Latin authors.

"He had" says Boswell "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 learnt, too, to love his college and the university. Later we shall see how affectionately he talked of the days when "he was generally seen lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies."

"O! Mr Edwards!" he exclaimed to an old friend about 50 years later "I'll convince you that I recollect you. Do you remember our drinking together at an alehouse near Pembroke gate?"—but we must go back and see him as he came down from Oxford at the age of 22:

"And now (I had almost said poor) Samuel Johnson returned to his native city, destitute, and not knowing how he should gain even a decent livelihood. His father's misfortune in trade rendered him unable to support his son; and for some time there appeared no means by which he could maintain himself. In the December of this year his father died."

"I layed by" wrote Johnson in his diary (15 July 1732) "eleven guineas on this day, when I received twenty pounds, being all that I have reason to hope for out of my father's effects, previous to the death of my mother; an event which I pray God may be very remote. I now therefore see that I must make my own fortune."

How was this fortune to be made?

Like many another after him who has left the university with no definite plan of life in view, Johnson turned inevitably to teaching, accepting "an offer to be employed as usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire, to which it appears, from one of his little fragments of a diary, that he went on foot."

Like many another, too, he soon complained that "this employment was very irksome to him in every respect ... that it was unvaried as the note of the cuckow; and that he did not know whether it was more disagreeable for him to teach, or the boys to learn, the grammar rules."

A few months of this were enough for him, after which he went to live with his friend Mr Hector at Birmingham and began to earn a little money by his pen. For the translation of a French book of travel he received five guineas.

In Birmingham Johnson fell in love with a widow—Mrs Porter. This lady was twenty years older than her lover and, as we shall see in a moment, no great beauty.

Nor was Johnson. When he was first introduced to her, "his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrophula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind: and he often had, seemingly, convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended to excite at once surprize and ridicule. Mrs Porter was so much engaged by his conversation that she overlooked all these external disadvantages and said to her daughter, 'this is the most sensible man that I ever saw in my life.'"

"I know not" Boswell goes on "for what reason the marriage ceremony was not performed at Birmingham; but a resolution was taken that it should be at Derby, for which place the bride and bridegroom set out on horseback, I suppose in very good humour ... I have had from my illustrious friend the following curious account of their journey to church upon the nuptial morn: 'Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, Sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be in tears.'"

This is what Boswell, who was a married man, calls "a manly firmness," though he admits that it was "a singular beginning."

"Sir," said Johnson to a friend years afterwards "it was a love marriage on both sides."

"In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1736," says Boswell, "there is the following advertisement:

But the only pupils that were put under his care were the celebrated David Garrick and his brother George, and a Mr Offely, a young gentleman of good fortune who died early."

Boswell (though he has a kind word of patronage for successful schoolmasters) evidently thought that his hero's brains were too good, and his temper too bad, for the profession of teaching; moreover, David Garrick was the kind of boy who is the despair of his teacher, the delight of his schoolfellows, and the hero of school stories.

The truth about Johnson as a schoolmaster, according to Boswell, was that "he was not so well qualified for being a teacher of elements ... as men of inferiour powers of mind.... The art of communicating instruction, of whatever kind, is much to be valued; and I have ever thought that those who devote themselves to this employment, and do their duty with diligence and success, are entitled to very high respect from the community, as Johnson himself often maintained. Yet I am of opinion that the greatest abilities are not only not required for this office, but render a man less fit for it. While we acknowledge the justness of Thomson's beautiful remark,

we must consider that this delight is perceptible only by 'a mind at ease,' a mind at once calm and clear; but that a mind gloomy and impetuous like that of Johnson, cannot be fixed for any length of time in minute attention, and must be so frequently irritated by unavoidable slowness and errour in the advances of scholars, as to perform the duty, with little pleasure to the teacher, and no great advantage to the pupils. Good temper is a most essential requisite in a Preceptor.... From Mr Garrick's account he did not appear to have been profoundly reverenced by his pupils. His oddities of manner, and uncouth gesticulations, could not but be the subject of merriment ... and, in particular, the young rogues used to ... turn into ridicule his tumultuous and awkward fondness for Mrs Johnson, whom he used to name ... Tetty or Tetsey ... which seems to us ludicrous, when applied to a woman of her age and appearance. Mr Garrick described her to me as very fat, with a bosom of more than ordinary protuberance, with swelled cheeks of a florid red, produced by thick painting, and increased by the liberal use of cordials; flaring and fantastick in her dress, and affected both in her speech and her general behaviour. I have seen Garrick exhibit her, by his exquisite talent of mimickry, so as to excite the heartiest bursts of laughter."

The "exquisite talent of mimickry" is not popular amongst schoolmasters and the academy for young gentlemen was closed after a year and a half.

Again, what was Johnson to do? He had tried teaching and failed; he had written a little, but could not hope to get money or fame by selling translations to country booksellers; he had married a wife. The next step was the decisive one:

"Johnson now thought of trying his fortune in London."