Note 663 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 4)
Reading edition
He told Boswell (ante, i. 68) that he had been a sort of lax talker against religion for some years before he went to Oxford, but that there he took up Law's Serious Call and found it quite an overmatch for him. 'This,' he said, 'was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of rational enquiry.' During the vacation of 1729 he had a serious illness (ante, i. 63), which most likely was 'the sickness that brought religion back.'