No man had a more ardent love of literature, or a higher respect for it than Johnson.  His apartment in Pembroke College was that upon the second floor, over the gateway.  The enthusiasts of learning will ever contemplate it with veneration.  One day, while he was sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Panting, then master of the College, whom he called ‘a fine Jacobite fellow,’ overheard him uttering this soliloquy in his strong, emphatick voice:  ’Well, I have a mind to see what is done in other places of learning.  I’ll go and visit the Universities abroad.  I’ll go to France and Italy.  I’ll go to Padua.—­And I’ll mind my business.  For an Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads.’

Dr. Adams told me that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke College, ’was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicksome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life.’  But this is a striking proof of the fallacy of appearances, and how little any of us know of the real internal state even of those whom we see most frequently; for the truth is, that he was then depressed by poverty, and irritated by disease.  When I mentioned to him this account as given me by Dr. Adams, he said; ’Ah, Sir, I was mad and violent.  It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick.  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.’

The Bishop of Dromore observes in a letter to me,

’The pleasure he took in vexing the tutors and fellows has been often mentioned.  But I have heard him say, what ought to be recorded to the honour of the present venerable master of that College, the Reverend William Adams, D.D., who was then very young, and one of the junior fellows; that the mild but judicious expostulations of this worthy man, whose virtue awed him, and whose learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself, “though I fear (said he) I was too proud to own it.”

’I have heard from some of his cotemporaries that he was generally seen lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which in his maturer years he so much extolled.’

I do not find that he formed any close intimacies with his fellow-collegians.  But Dr. Adams told me that he contracted a love and regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last.  A short time before his death he sent to that College a present of all his works, to be deposited in their library; and he had thoughts of leaving to it his house at Lichfield; but his friends who were about him very properly dissuaded him from it, and he bequeathed it to some poor relations.  He took a pleasure in boasting of the many eminent men who had been educated at Pembroke.  In this list are found the names of Mr. Hawkins the Poetry Professor, Mr. Shenstone,