e of the counsel, was to come on.

I introduced the topick, which is often ignorantly urged, that the
Universities of England are too rich; so that learning does not flourish
in them as it would do, if those who teach had smaller salaries, and
depended on their assiduity for a great part of their income. JOHNSON.
'Sir, the very reverse of this is the truth; the English Universities
are not rich enough. Our fellowships are only sufficient to support
a man during his studies to fit him for the world, and accordingly
in general they are held no longer than till an opportunity offers of
getting away. Now and then, perhaps, there is a fellow who grows old
in his college; but this is against his will, unless he be a man very
indolent indeed. A hundred a year is reckoned a good fellowship, and
that is no more than is necessary to keep a man decently as a scholar.
We do not allow our fellows to marry, because we consider academical
institutions as preparatory to a settlement in the world. It is only by
being employed as a tutor, that a fellow can obtain any thing more than
a livelihood. To be sure a man, who has enough without teaching, will
probably not teach; for we would all be idle if we could. In the same
manner, a man who is to get nothing by teaching, will not exert himself.
Gresham College was intended as a place of instruction for London;
able professors were to read lectures gratis, they contrived to have no
scholars; whereas, if they had been allowed to receive but sixpence a
lecture from each scholar, they would have been emulous to have had many
scholars. Every body will agree that it should be the interest of those
who teach to have scholars and this is the case in our Universities.
That they are too rich is certainly not true; for they have nothing good
enough to keep a man of eminent learning with them for his life. In
the foreign Universities a professorship is a high thing. It is as much
almost as a man can make by his learning; and therefore we find the most
learned men abroad are in the Universities. It is not so with us.
Our Universities are impoverished of learning, by the penury of their
provisions. I wish there were many places of a thousand a-year
at Oxford, to keep first-rate men of learning from quitting the
University.'

I mentioned Mr. Maclaurin's uneasiness on account of a degree of
ridicule carelessly thrown on his deceased father, in Goldsmith's
History of Animated Nature, in which that celebrat