d into a permanent source of nobler views of life and the
world.

There are difficulties in determining the circumstances and duration of
Johnson's stay at Oxford. He began residence at Pembroke College in
1728. It seems probable that he received some assistance from a
gentleman whose son took him as companion, and from the clergy of
Lichfield, to whom his father was known, and who were aware of the son's
talents. Possibly his college assisted him during part of the time. It
is certain that he left without taking a degree, though he probably
resided for nearly three years. It is certain, also, that his father's
bankruptcy made his stay difficult, and that the period must have been
one of trial.

The effect of the Oxford residence upon Johnson's mind was
characteristic. The lad already suffered from the attacks of melancholy,
which sometimes drove him to the borders of insanity. At Oxford, Law's
_Serious Call_ gave him the strong religious impressions which remained
through life. But he does not seem to have been regarded as a gloomy or
a religious youth by his contemporaries. When told in after years that
he had been described as a "gay and frolicsome fellow," he replied, "Ah!
sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for
frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my
literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority."
Though a hearty supporter of authority in principle, Johnson was
distinguished through life by the strongest spirit of personal
independence and self-respect. He held, too, the sound doctrine,
deplored by his respectable biographer Hawkins, that the scholar's life,
like the Christian's, levelled all distinctions of rank. When an
officious benefactor put a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them
away with indignation. He seems to have treated his tutors with a
contempt which Boswell politely attributed to "great fortitude of mind,"
but Johnson himself set down as "stark insensibility." The life of a
poor student is not, one may fear, even yet exempt from much bitterness,
and in those days the position was far more servile than at present. The
servitors and sizars had much to bear from richer companions. A proud
melancholy lad, conscious of great powers, had to meet with hard
rebuffs, and tried to meet them by returning scorn for scorn.

Such distresses, however, did not shake Johnson's rooted Toryism. He
fully imbibed, if he did not alread