'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,