Oxford the necessity of rousing his countrymen from the religious
lethargy into which they had sunk. "Have not pride and haughtiness of
spirit, impatience, and peevishness, sloth and indolence, gluttony and
sensuality, and even a proverbial uselessness been objected to us,
perhaps not always by our enemies nor wholly without ground?" So said
Wesley, preaching before the University of Oxford in 1744, and the words
in his mouth imply more than the preacher's formality. Adam Smith,
Johnson's junior by fourteen years, was so impressed by the utter
indifference of Oxford authorities to their duties, as to find in it an
admirable illustration of the consequences of the neglect of the true
principles of supply and demand implied in the endowment of learning.
Gibbon, his junior by twenty-eight years, passed at Oxford the "most
idle and unprofitable" months of his whole life; and was, he said, as
willing to disclaim the university for a mother, as she could be to
renounce him for a son. Oxford, as judged by these men, was remarkable
as an illustration of the spiritual and intellectual decadence of a body
which at other times has been a centre of great movements of thought.
Johnson, though his experience was rougher than any of the three, loved
Oxford as though she had not been a harsh stepmother to his youth. Sir,
he said fondly of his college, "we are a nest of singing-birds." Most of
the strains are now pretty well forgotten, and some of them must at all
times have been such as we scarcely associate with the nightingale.
Johnson, however, cherished his college friendships, delighted in paying
visits to his old university, and was deeply touched by the academical
honours by which Oxford long afterwards recognized an eminence scarcely
fostered by its protection. Far from sharing the doctrines of Adam
Smith, he only regretted that the universities were not richer, and
expressed a desire which will be understood by advocates of the
"endowment of research," that there were many places of a thousand a
year at Oxford.