before he liked his Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read
SOLIDLY at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and
Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of which
he was the most fond was Metaphysicks, but he had not read much, even in
that way. I always thought that he did himself injustice in his account
of what he had read, and that he must have been speaking with reference
to the vast portion of study which is possible, and to which a few
scholars in the whole history of literature have attained; for when
I once asked him whether a person, whose name I have now forgotten,
studied hard, he answered 'No, Sir; I do not believe he studied hard. I
never knew a man who studied hard. I conclude, indeed, from the effects,
that some men have studied hard, as Bentley and Clarke.' Trying him by
that criterion upon which he formed his judgement of others, we may be
absolutely certain, both from his writings and his conversation, that
his reading was very extensive. Dr. Adam Smith, than whom few were
better judges on this subject, once observed to me that 'Johnson knew
more books than any man alive.' He had a peculiar facility in seizing at
once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of
perusing it from beginning to end. He had, from the irritability of his
constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read
or wrote. A certain apprehension, arising from novelty, made him write
his first exercise at College twice over; but he never took that trouble
with any other composition; and we shall see that his most excellent
works were struck off at a heat, with rapid exertion.

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