the Universities abroad. I'll go to France and Italy. I'll go to Padua[1].—And I'll mind my business. For an Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads[2].'
Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, 'was caressed and loved by all about him, as a gay and frolicksome[3] fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life.' But this 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
- ↑ Goldsmith did go to Padua, and stayed there some months. Forster's Goldsmith, i. 71.
- ↑ I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnson confirmed it. Bramston, in his Alan of Taste, has the same thought:
'Sure, of all blockheads, scholars are the worst.' Boswell.
Johnson's meaning, however, is, that a scholar who is a blockhead must be the worst of all blockheads, because he is without excuse. But Bramston, in the assumed character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains that all scholars are blockheads on account of their scholarship. J. Boswell, Jun. There is, I believe, a Spanish proverb to the effect that, 'to be an utter fool a man must know Latin.' A writer in Notes and Queries (5th S. xii. 285) suggests that Johnson had in mind Acts xvii. 21.
- ↑ 'It was the practice in his time for a servitor, by order of the Master, to go round to the rooms of the young men, and knocking at the door to enquire if they were within; and if no answer was returned to report them absent. Johnson could not endure this intrusion, and would frequently be silent, when the utterance of a word would have ensured him from censure, and would join with others of the young men in the college in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who was thus diligent in his duty, and this they did with the noise of pots and candlesticks, singing to the tune of Chevy Chase the words in the old ballad,— "To drive the deer with hound and horn!"' Hawkins, -p. 12. Whitefield, writing of a few years later, says:—'At this time Satan used to terrify me much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would appear to me every stair I went up.' Tyerman's Whitefield, i. 20.
