He was not, however, blind to what he thought the defects of his own College; and I have, from the information of Dr. Taylor, a very strong instance of that rigid honesty which he ever inflexibly preserved. Taylor had obtained his father's consent to be entered of Pembroke, that he might be with his school-fellow Johnson, with whom, though some years older than himself, he was very intimate. This would have been a great comfort to Johnson. But he fairly told Taylor that he could not, in conscience, suffer him to enter where he knew he could not have an able tutor. He then made inquiry all round the University, and having found that Mr. Bateman, of Christ Church, was the tutor of highest reputation, Taylor was entered of that College[1]. 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[2]. 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[3]. How must we feel when we read such an anecdote of Samuel Johnson!
- ↑ Taylor matriculated on Feb. 24, 1729. Mr. Croker in his note has confounded him with another John Taylor who matriculated more than a year later. Richard West, writing of Christ Church in 1735, says:—'Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown.' Gray's Letters, ii. 1.
- ↑ 'Si toga sordidula est et rupta calceus alter
Pelle patet.''Or if the shoe be ript, or patches put.' Dryden, Juvenal, iii. 149. Johnson in his London, in describing 'the blockhead's insults,' while he mentions 'the tattered cloak,' passes over the ript shoe. Perhaps the wound had gone too deep to his generous heart for him to bear even to think on it.
- ↑ 'Yet some have refused my bounties, more offended with my quickness to detect their wants than pleased with my readiness to succour them.' Rasselas. ch. 25. 'His [Savage's] distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him ; in his lowest state he wanted not spirit
