Here
was a most cordial greeting on both sides. On leaving him, Johnson said,
"I used to think Meeke had excellent parts, when we were boys together
at the College: but, alas!
'Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!'
I remember, at the classical lecture in the Hall, I could not bear
Meeke's superiority, and I tried to sit as far from him as I could, that
I might not hear him construe."
'As we were leaving the College, he said, "Here I translated Pope's
Messiah. Which do you think is the best line in it?--My own favourite
is,
'Vallis aromaticas fundit Saronica nubes.'"
I told him, I thought it a very sonorous hexameter. I did not tell him,
it was not in the Virgilian style. He much regretted that his FIRST
tutor was dead; for whom he seemed to retain the greatest regard. He
said, "I once had been a whole morning sliding in Christ-Church Meadow,
and missed his lecture in logick. After dinner, he sent for me to his
room. I expected a sharp rebuke for my idleness, and went with a beating
heart.
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