as
never prevented from using his own mind and his own words by the fact
that his memory supplied him abundantly with those of others. His
scholarly friend Langton annoyed him by depending upon books too much
in his conversation, and one of his compliments to Boswell was, "You
and I do not talk from books."

After he left Stourbridge he spent two years at home in desultory
reading, "not voyages and travels, but all literature, sir, all ancient
writers, all manly; though but little Greek, only some of Anacreon and
Hesiod," the result of which was that when he went up to Oxford, the
Master of his College said he was "the best qualified for the
University that {90} he had ever known come there." His College was
Pembroke, of which he became a Commoner (not a Servitor, as Carlyle
said) in 1728. The Oxford of that day was not a place of much
discipline and the official order of study was very laxly maintained.
It seems not to have meant much to Johnson, and he is described as
having spent a good deal of his time "lounging at the College gates
with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining
with wit and keeping from their studies." Most good talkers find the
first real sphere for their talent when they get to the University, and
the best of all was not likely to be an exception, nor to resist that
strongest of the intellectual temptations. But he did some solid
reading, especially Greek, though he seemed to himself to be very idle,
perhaps because his standard was so high that he used to say in later
life, "I never knew a man who studied hard." So when he confesses the
imperfections of his Greek scholarship, and other people exaggerate his
confession, it is well to remember the reply made by Jacob Bryant when
Gifford in an argument quoted Johnson's admission that "he was not a
good Greek scholar," "Sir, it is not easy for us to say what such a man
as Johnson would call a good Greek scholar." A man whose remedy for
{91} sleeplessness was to turn Greek epigrams into Latin was at any
rate not ignorant of Greek.

Johnson was prevented by his poverty from getting the full advantages
either out of the life or the studies of Oxford. His want of shoes
prevented his attending lectures, his pride forbad him to receive doles
of help, the friend, said to be a Mr. Corbet of Shropshire, on whose
promises of support he had relied in going to Oxford, failed him, his
father's business went from little to less; wit