[663] He told Boswell (ante, i. 68) that he had been a sort of lax talker against religion for some years before he went to Oxford, but that there he took up Law’s Serious Call and found it quite an overmatch for him.  ‘This,’ he said, ’was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of rational enquiry.’  During the vacation of 1729 he had a serious illness (ante, i. 63), which most likely was ‘the sickness that brought religion back.’

[664] See ante, i. 93, 164, and post, under Dec. 2, 1784.

[665] Mr. Langton.  See ante, ii. 254.

[666] See ante, ii. 249.

[667] Malloch continued to write his name thus, after he came to London.  His verses prefixed to the second edition of Thomson’s Winter are so subscribed.  MALONE.  ’Alias.  A Latin word signifying otherwise; as, Mallet, alias Malloch; that is otherwise Malloch.’  The mention of Mallet first comes in Johnson’s own abridgment of his Dictionary.  In the earlier unabridged editions the definition concludes, ’often used in the trials of criminals, whose danger has obliged them to change their names; as Simpson alias Smith, alias Baker, &c.’  For Mallet, see ante, i. 268, and ii. 159.

[668] Perhaps Scott had this saying of Johnson’s in mind when he made Earl Douglas exclaim:—­

     ’At first in heart it liked me ill,
     When the King praised his clerkly skill. 
     Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine,
     Save Gawain, ne’er could pen a line.’
Marmion, canto vi. 15.

[669] See Boswell’s Hebrides, Sept. 10.

[670] Johnson often maintained this diffusion of learning.  Thus he wrote:—­’The call for books was not in Milton’s age what it is in the present.  To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance.  The women had not then aspired to literature nor was every house supplied with a closet of knowledge.’ Works, vii. 107.  He goes on to mention ’that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its ranks.’ Works, p. 108.  ’That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in Addison’s time rarely to be found.  Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and, in the female world, any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured.’ Ib. p.470.  ’Of the Essay on Criticism, Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick, because “not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could understand it.”  The gentlemen, and the education of that time, seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this.’ Ib. viii. 243.  See ante, iii. 3, 254.  Yet he maintained that ’learning has decreased in England, because learning will not do so much for a man as formerly.’  Boswell’s Hebrides, post, v. 80.