d at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the
young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were
amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by
the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up
during many months of desultory but not unprofitable study. On the first
day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and
one of the most learned among them declared that he had never known a
freshman of equal attainments.

At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. He was poor, even
to raggedness; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity which
were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from the
quadrangle of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members
of that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some
charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurned them
away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and
ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty,
could have treated the academical authorities with more gross
disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate
of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of
lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit
and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against
the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was
pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and
acquirements. He had early made himself known by turning Pope's Messiah
into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly
Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was read with
pleasure by Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of
things, have become a Bachelor of Arts: but he was at the end of his
resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not been
kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen
were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn of 1731,
he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a
degree. In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a
pittance; and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the
support of his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to
no more than twenty pounds.

His life, during the thi