e can often benefit, and always please." This advice Johnson
seems to have pursued with a good inclination. His reading was always
desultory, seldom resting on any particular author, but rambling from
one book to another, and, by hasty snatches, hoarding up a variety of
knowledge. It may be proper, in this place, to mention another general
rule laid down by Ford for Johnson's future conduct: "You will make your
way the more easily in the world, as you are contented to dispute no
man's claim to conversation excellence: they will, therefore, more
willingly allow your pretensions as a writer." "But," says Mrs. Piozzi,
"the features of peculiarity, which mark a character to all succeeding
generations, are slow in coming to their growth." That ingenious lady
adds, with her usual vivacity, "Can one, on such an occasion, forbear
recollecting the predictions of Boileau's father, who said, stroking the
head of the young satirist, 'This little man has too much wit, but he
will never speak ill of any one.'"

On Johnson's return from Cornelius Ford, Mr. Hunter, then master of the
free school at Lichfield, refused to receive him again on that
foundation. At this distance of time, what his reasons were, it is vain
to inquire; but to refuse assistance to a lad of promising genius must
be pronounced harsh and illiberal. It did not, however, stop the
progress of the young student's education. He was placed at another
school, at Stourbridge in Worcestershire, under the care of Mr.
Wentworth. Having gone through the rudiments of classic literature, he
returned to his father's house, and was probably intended for the trade
of a bookseller. He has been heard to say that he could bind a book. At
the end of two years, being then about nineteen, he went to assist the
studies of a young gentleman, of the name of Corbet, to the university
of Oxford; and on the 31st of October, 1728, both were entered of
Pembroke college; Corbet as a gentleman-commoner, and Johnson as a
commoner. The college tutor, Mr. Jordan, was a man of no genius; and
Johnson, it seems, shewed an early contempt of mean abilities, in one or
two instances behaving with insolence to that gentleman. Of his general
conduct at the university there are no particulars that merit attention,
except the translation of Pope's Messiah, which was a college exercise
imposed upon him as a task by Mr. Jordan. Corbet left the university in
about two years, and Johnson's salary ceased. He was, by