Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora poetae
Ingenium jubeas purior baustus alat.


In spite of the muddy beer, the poverty, and the "bitterness mistaken
for frolic," with which Johnson entertained the other undergraduates
round Pembroke gate, he never ceased to respect his college. "His
love and regard for Pembroke he entertained to the last," while of
his old tutor he said, "a man who becomes Jorden's pupil becomes his
son." Gibbon's sneer is a foil to Johnson's kindliness. "I applaud
the filial piety which it is impossible for me to imitate . . . To
the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligations, and she will
as cheerfully renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her
for a mother."

Johnson was a man who could take the rough with the smooth, and, to
judge by all accounts, the Oxford of the earlier half of the
eighteenth century was excessively rough. Manners were rather
primitive: a big fire burned in the centre of Balliol Hall, and
round this fire, one night in every year, it is said that all the
world was welcome to a feast of ale and bread and cheese. Every
guest paid his shot by singing a song or telling a story; and one can
fancy Johnson sharing in this barbaric hospitality. "What learning
can they have who are destitute of all principles of civil
behaviour?" says a writer from whose journal (printed in 1746)
Southey has made some extracts. The diarist was a Puritan of the old
leaven, who visited Oxford shortly before Johnson's period, and who
speaks of "a power of gross darkness that may be felt constantly