indolence, gluttony and sensuality, and even a proverbial uselessness been objected to us, perhaps not always by our enemies nor wholly without ground?” So said Wesley, preaching before the University of Oxford in 1744, and the words in his mouth imply more than the preacher’s formality.  Adam Smith, Johnson’s junior by fourteen years, was so impressed by the utter indifference of Oxford authorities to their duties, as to find in it an admirable illustration of the consequences of the neglect of the true principles of supply and demand implied in the endowment of learning.  Gibbon, his junior by twenty-eight years, passed at Oxford the “most idle and unprofitable” months of his whole life; and was, he said, as willing to disclaim the university for a mother, as she could be to renounce him for a son.  Oxford, as judged by these men, was remarkable as an illustration of the spiritual and intellectual decadence of a body which at other times has been a centre of great movements of thought.  Johnson, though his experience was rougher than any of the three, loved Oxford as though she had not been a harsh stepmother to his youth.  Sir, he said fondly of his college, “we are a nest of singing-birds.”  Most of the strains are now pretty well forgotten, and some of them must at all times have been such as we scarcely associate with the nightingale.  Johnson, however, cherished his college friendships, delighted in paying visits to his old university, and was deeply touched by the academical honours by which Oxford long afterwards recognized an eminence scarcely fostered by its protection.  Far from sharing the doctrines of Adam Smith, he only regretted that the universities were not richer, and expressed a desire which will be understood by advocates of the “endowment of research,” that there were many places of a thousand a year at Oxford.

On leaving the University, in 1731, the world was all before him.  His father died in the end of the year, and Johnson’s whole immediate inheritance was twenty pounds.  Where was he to turn for daily bread?  Even in those days, most gates were barred with gold and opened but to golden keys.  The greatest chance for a poor man was probably through the Church.  The career of Warburton, who rose from a similar position to a bishopric might have been rivalled by Johnson, and his connexions with Lichfield might, one would suppose, have helped him to a start.  It would be easy to speculate upon causes which might have hindered such a career.  In later life, he more than once refused to take orders upon the promise of a living.  Johnson, as we know him, was a man of the world; though a religious man of the world.  He represents the secular rather than the ecclesiastical type.  So far as his mode of teaching goes, he is rather a disciple of Socrates than of St. Paul or Wesley.  According to him, a “tavern-chair” was “the throne of human felicity,” and supplied a better arena than the pulpit for the utterance of his message to