JOHNSON. 7 



of assistance while in such distress. The pecuniary dif- 

 ficulties of his father increasing, or the aid of his friends 

 being withdrawn, he could not longer remain at college, 

 even in that poor condition ; and after three years' resi- 

 dence he was under the necessity of retiring to Lichfield 

 without taking a degree. But his veneration for the 

 University, and above all, his love for Pembroke, remained 

 by him ever after. When noting the numb IT of poets 

 who had belonged to it, he would cry out with exulta- 

 tion, " Sir, we are a nest of singing birds ;" and to the 

 latest period of his life, his choicest relaxation was to 

 repair from London and pass a few days at the Master's 

 Lodge. 



During his residence, he passed the periods of vaca- 

 tion at Lichfield ; and there is something peculiarly dis- 

 tressing in the account handed down, and indeed pro- 

 ceeding chiefly from himself, of the wretchedness which he 

 suffered about this early age, in consequence of his morbid 

 state of mind. The first of the violent attacks of hypo- 

 chondria which he experienced was in 1 729, in his twen- 

 tieth year ; and it seized upon him with such irritation 

 and fretfulness, with such dejection and gloom, that he 

 described his existence as a misery. The judgment 

 appears never to have been clouded, nor the imagination 

 to have acquired greater power over the reason, than to 

 impress him with fearful apprehensions of insanity ; for 

 he never was under anything resembling delusion ; and 

 although a torpor of the faculties would often supervene, 

 insomuch that there were days when he said he could 

 not exert himself so as to tell the hour upon the town 

 clock, yet even while suffering severely he had the power 

 of drawing up a most clear, acute, and elegant account 



