THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D. BY S. W. SINGER, Esq. PERHAPS no distinguished character, ancient or modern, has been so fortunate in a biographer as Johnson; nor does there exist in any language so complete a picture of the mind and habits of an illustrious scholar: Etiam mortuus loquitur,' says Cumberland, 'every man who can buy a book, has bought a Boswell.' It will suffice, then, on the present occasion to detail a few dates and facts, without attempting a history of his literary progress. SAMUEL JOHNSON was the son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller at Litchfield, and was born there on the seventh of September, 1709. He was the eldest of two sons; his brother Nathaniel succeeded his father in his business, and died in his twenty-fifth year, in 1737. Johnson inherited from his father that morbid melancholy which occasionally depressed him, and which his mighty mind could not always overcome. He was also unfortunate enough to imbibe, from his nurse, the disease called the king's evil; and his parents, who were stanch jacobites, presented him to Queen Anne for the royal touch; but, notwithstanding M this potent remedy, an operation became necessary, the scars of which disfigured the lower part of his face; by this disease, his hearing and the sight of his left eye were impaired. He received the rudiments of education at the free grammar school of his native town, and made rapid progress in his classical studies. Mr. Hunter, the master of the school, though an excellent teacher, was a strict disciplinarian; and Johnson smarted under his lash; but confessed in after life that it was not without reason. Restraint sat uneasy upon him, he could not conquer his aversion to stated tasks, but when he chose to apply himself he could do more than other boys in much shorter time; and his ambition, which prompted him to be the captain of the school, overcame his constitutional indolence. He rarely mingled in the common sports of the boys, but amused himself with sauntering in the fields, and at times talking aloud to himself. When he was fifteen years old, he spent some months in a visit to his cousin the eccentric Cornelius Ford, from whose advice and assistance he profited in the prosecution of his studies. On his return to Litchfield, the master of the school refused to receive him again on the foundation, and he was therefore placed in a school at Stourbridge in Worcestershire, where he remained above a year, and then returned home. Even in his youth, Johnson was a true helluo librorum; his reading was multifarious and without system, but yet very extraordinary for a boy; 'I read (says be) all literature, all ancient writers ;' and Dr. Percy has recorded his passion for romances at this time. When on a visit at his parsonage he chose for his regular reading the ponderous folio romance of Felixmarte d'Hercania, in Spanish, which he read quite through. He retained his partiality for this species of fiction in advanced years, and sometimes attributed to its influence that unsettled turn of mind which prevented his ever fixing in any profession. He passed two years at home in this excursive kind of desultory reading, and made translations in verse from Homer, Virgil, and Horace, specimens of which have been preserved by his assiduous friend and biographer Boswell: none of them are very remarkable for their excellence, even though the age at which they were performed be considered. In 1728, when he was about nineteen, he went to Oxford, and was entered commoner of Pembroke College. His father's circumstances would not have allowed him to think of a college education, had he not been selected by Mr. Corbet, a Shropshire gentleman, to accompany his son (who had been Johnson's schoolfellow) to the university, in the character of companion, with a promise of supporting him there; but it appears that he never received any pecuniary assistance, and was left to struggle his way, as well as he could, in poverty; which must have vexed his proud and independent spirit. His tutor at college was Mr. Jorden, a worthy man, but not gifted with a mind or acquirements to fit him for a director of Johnson's studies; who, though he respected his kind heartedness, held his scholarship in contempt. His studies were here as desultory as they had been at home: he read without method; but told Mr. Boswell that 'what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and Euripides, and now and then a little epigram; that the study of which he was the most fond was metaphysics, but he had not read much even in that way.' Dr. Percy relates that he was generally seen lounging at the college-gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting |