Two of Johnson's desks are preserved in the present Library, which he knew as the Dining Hall, of Pembroke; and his tea-pot is in a cabinet in the Bursary, not far from a life portrait of Shenstone. Little did those collegians think, as collegians, that their college would ever care to preserve, as sacred relics, anything of theirs. How many of the freshmen of the present can tell that they may not do deeds, with their heads, which in later years will lead to the exhibition, in University Halls, on either side Atlantic, of their beer-mugs and their photographs, by the side of battered and historic foot-balls, and base-balls, and tennis-rackets, and groups of winning teams, in all sorts of battered and historic attitudes?
An entire volume might be written upon the subject of Johnson's Oxford alone.
He liked greatly, after his undergraduate days, Kettell Hall, on Broad Street, now numbered 54, on the north side, an old stone building, ivy-covered, and gabled, entered by a door studded with iron nails. It was the one-time home of his friend Dr. Thomas Warton. There Johnson spent a month once, not writing his Dictionary, as the guide-books say, but studying in the libraries of the different colleges, certain authorities on etymology which were not accessible to him in London.
