se of
conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted Macrobius; and thus he
gave the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had
indulged himself.

His tutor, Mr. Jorden, fellow of Pembroke, was not, it seems, a man of
such abilities as we should conceive requisite for the instructor of
Samuel Johnson, who gave me the following account of him. 'He was a
very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his
instructions. Indeed, I did not attend him much. The first day after
I came to college I waited upon him, and then staid away four. On the
sixth, Mr. Jorden asked me why I had not attended. I answered I had
been sliding in Christ-Church meadow. And this I said with as much
nonchalance as I am now talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong
or irreverent to my tutor. BOSWELL: 'That, Sir, was great fortitude of
mind.' JOHNSON: 'No, Sir; stark insensibility.'

He had a love and respect for Jorden, not for his literature, but for
his worth. 'Whenever (said he) a young man becomes Jorden's pupil, he
becomes his son.'

Having given a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr.
Jorden, to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, as a Christmas
exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a
manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept
him high in the estimation of his College, and, indeed, of all the
University.

It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of
strong approbation. Dr. Taylor told me, that it was first printed for
old Mr. Johnson, without the knowledge of his son, who was very angry
when he heard of it.

The 'morbid melancholy,' which was lurking in his constitution, and to
which we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to regular
life, which, at a very early period, marked his character, gathered such
strength in his twentieth year, as to afflict him in a dreadful manner.
While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he
felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with perpetual
irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom,
and despair, which made existence misery. From this dismal malady he
never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours, and
all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful
influence. He told Mr. Paradise that he was sometimes so languid and
inefficient, that he c