'
'I have not been troubled for a long time with authours desiring my
opinion of their works. I used once to be sadly plagued with a man who
wrote verses, but who literally had no other notion of a verse, but that
it consisted of ten syllables. Lay your knife and your fork, across your
plate, was to him a verse:
Lay your knife and your fork, across your plate.
As he wrote a great number of verses, he sometimes by chance made good
ones, though he did not know it.'
Johnson expatiated on the advantages of Oxford for learning. 'There is
here, Sir, (said he,) such a progressive emulation. The students are
anxious to appear well to their tutors; the tutors are anxious to have
their pupils appear well in the college; the colleges are anxious
to have their students appear well in the University; and there are
excellent rules of discipline in every college. That the rules are
sometimes ill observed, may be true; but is nothing against the system.
The members of an University may, for a season, be unmindful of their
duty.
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