light parts of a solid character." "Nay, if you are for family history (said Dr. Johnson, good-humouredly), I can fit you: I had an uncle, Cornelius Ford, who, upon a journey, stopped and read an inscription written on a stone he saw standing by the way-side, set up, as it proved, in honour of a man who had leaped a certain leap thereabouts, the extent of which was specified upon the stone: Why now, said my uncle, I could leap it in my boots; and he did leap it in his boots. I had likewise another uncle, Andrew (continued he), my father's brother, who kept the ring in Smithfield, where they wrestled and boxed, for a whole year, and never was thrown or conquered. Here now are uncles for you, mistress2, if that's the way to your heart."] 1 [Miss Seward, who latterly showed a great deal of malevolence towards Johnson, delighted to repeat a story that one of his uncles had suffered the last penalty of the law. "Shortly after Mr. Porter's death, Johnson asked his mother's consent to marry the old widow. After expressing her surprise at a request so extraordinary No, Sam, my willing consent you will never have to so preposterous a union. You are not twenty-five, and she is turned fifty. If she had any prudence, this request had never been made to me. Where are your means of subsistence? Porter has died poor, in consequence of his wife's expensive habits. You have great talents, but as yet have turned them into no profitable channel.'— Mother, I have not deceived Mrs. Porter; I have told her the worst of me; that I am of mean extraction; that I have no money; and that I have had an uncle hanged.' She replied, that she valued no one more or less for his descent; that she had no more money than myself; and that, though she had not had a relation hanged, she had fifty who deserved hanging.'"-(Seward's Letters, vol. i, p. 45.) This account was given to Mr. Boswell, who, as Miss Seward could not have known it of her own knowledge, asked the lady for her authority. Miss Seward, in reply, quoted Mrs. Cobb, an old friend of Johnson's, who resided at Lichfield. To her, then, Boswell addressed himself; and, to his equal satisfaction and surprise, was answered that Mrs. Cobb had not only never told such a story, but that she had not even ever heard of it.—(Gent. Mag. vol. 63, p. 1009.) It is painful to have to add, that notwithstanding this denial, Miss Seward persisted in her story to the last. The report as to the hanging was probably derived from a coarse passage in the Rev. Donald M'Nicol's Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Journey to the Hebrides. "But whatever the Doctor may insinuate about the present scarcity of trees in Scotland, we are much deceived by fame if a very near ancestor of his, who was a native of that country, did not find to his cost that a tree was not quite such a rarity in his days." (P. 18. ed. 1779.) That some Scotchman, of the name of Johnston, may have been hanged in the seventeenth century, is very likely; but there seems no reason whatsoever to believe that any of Dr. Johnson's family were natives of Scotland.-Ed ] pass [Of some other members of his family he gave the following account: "This Whitsuntide (1719), I Account and my brother were sent to of Life, some time at Birmingham; I be- P. 27. lieve a fortnight. Why such boys were sent to trouble other homes, I cannot tell. My mother had some opinion that much improvement was to be had by changing the mode of life. My uncle, Harrison, was a widower; and his house was kept by Sally Ford, a young woman of such sweetness of temper, that I used to say she had no fault. We lived most at uncle Ford's, being much caressed by my aunt, a goodnatured, coarse woman, easy of converse, but willing to find something to censure in the absent. My uncle, Harrison, did not much like us, nor did we like him. He was a very mean and vulgar man, drunk every night, but drunk with little drink; very peevish, very proud, very ostentatious, but, luckily, not rich. At my aunt Ford's I eat so much of a boiled leg of mutton 3, that she used to talk of it. My mother, who had lived in a narrow sphere, and was then affected by little things, told me seriously that it would be hardly ever forgotten. Her mind, I think, was afterwards very much enlarged, or greater evils wore out the care of less. on "I staid after the vacation was over some days; and remember, when I wrote home, that I desired the horses to come Thursday of the first school week; and not till then. I was much pleased with a rattle to my whip, and wrote of it to my mother. "When my father came to fetch us home, he told the ostler that he had twelve miles home, and two boys under his care. This offended me. He had then a watch 4, which he returned when he was to pay for it."] Michael Johnson was, however, forced by the narrowness of his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not only in his shop, but by occasionally reSorting to several towns in the neighbourhood, some of which were at a considerable [The reader is requested to observe, that Dr Johnson used familiarly to designate Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi) as his "mistress."-ED.] 3 [All these trifles since Dr. Johnson in the height of his fame (for the Account must have been written subsequent to 1768) thought them worth recording-appear worth quoting. It will be seen hereafter that his voracious love of a leg of mutton adhered to him through life; and the prophesy of his mother, that it never would be forgotten, is realised in a way the good woman could not have anticipated.-ED.] 4 [The convenience of a watch, now so gen eral, Doctor Johnsor himself, as Sir J. Haw kins reports (p. 46)), not possess till 1768 ED.] that I shall not omit it. A young woman of Leek, in Staffordshire, while he served his apprenticeship there, conceived a violent passion for him; and though it met with no favourable return, followed him to Lichfield, where she took lodgings opposite to the house in which he lived, and indulged her hopeless flame. When he was informed that it so preyed upon her mind that her life was in danger, he, with a generous hu distance from Lichfield. At that time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of England were very rare, so that there was not one even in Birmingham, in which town old Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market-day. He was a pretty good Latin scholar, and a citizen so creditable as to be made [as has been stated] one of the magistrates of Lichfield; and, being a man of good sense, and skill in his trade, he acquired a reasonable share of wealth, of which how-manity, went to her and offered to marry ever he afterwards lost the greatest part, by engaging unsuccessfully in a manufacture of parchment. [In this undertaking, nothing prospered; they had Mag. no sooner bought a large stock of skins, than a heavy duty was laid upon that article, and from Michael's absence by his many avocations as a bookseller, the parchment business was committed to a faithless servant, and thence they gradually declined into strait circumstances 1.] He was a zealous high-church man and royalist, and retained his attachment to the unfortunate house of Stuart, though he reconciled himself by casuistical arguments of expediency and necessity, to take the oaths imposed by the prevailing power. Gent. There is a circumstance in his life somewhat? romantick, but so well authenticated [Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines "ExCISE, a hateful tax, levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid;" and in the Idler (No. 65), he calls a Commissioner of Excise "one of the lowest of all human beings.' This violence of language seems so little reasonable, that the Editor was induced to suspect some cause of personal animosity; this mention of the trade in parchment (an exciseable article) afforded a clue, which has led to the confirmation of that sus picion. In the records of the Excise Board is to be found the following letter, addressed to the supervisor of excise at Lichfield: July 27, 1725.-The Commissioners received yours of the 22d instant, and since the justices would not give judgment against Mr. Michael Johnson, the tanner, notwithstanding the facts were fairly against him, the Board direct that the next time he of fends, you do not lay an information against him, but send an affidavit of the fact, that he may be prosecuted in the Exchequer." It does not appear whether he offended again, but here is a sufficient cause of his son's animosity against Commissioners of Excise, and of the allusion in the Dictionary to the special jurisdiction under which that revenue is administered. The reluctance of the justices to convict will appear not unnatural, when it is recollected that M. JohnBon was, this very year, chief magistrate of the city.-ED.] 2 [The romantic part of this story does not seem otherwise authenticated than by an assertion in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 55, p. 100, on, as it would seem, the doubtful authority of her, but it was then too late: her vital power was exhausted; and she actually exhibited one of the very rare instances of dying for love. She was buried in the cathedral of Lichfield; and he, with a tender regard, placed a stone over her grave with this inscription: Here lies the body of Mrs. ELIZABETH BLANEY, a stranger: Piazzi, p. 6. Johnson's mother [was slight in her person, and rather below than above the common size. So excellent was her character, and so blameless her life, that when an oppressive neighbour once endeavoured to take from her a little field she possessed, he could persuade no attorney to undertake the cause against a woman so beloved in her narrow circle: and it is this incident he alludes to in the line of his Vanity of Human Wishes, calling her Account The general favourite as the general friend. Nor could any one pay more willing hornage to such a character, though she had not been related to him, than did Dr. Johnson on every occasion that offered: his disquisition on Pope's epitaph placed over Mrs. Corbet, by him to a noiseless life over a bustling is a proof of that preference always given one.] She was a woman of distinguished understanding. [It was not, however, Mr. Malone observes, much cultivated, as may be collected from Dr. Johnson's own account. My father and mother (said he) had not much happiness of from each other. She had no value p. 14. for his relations; those indeed whom we knew of were much lower than hers. This contempt began, I know not on which Miss Seward, that Doctor Johnson had told it. Admitting that he did so, it is to be observed that the fact happened fifteen years before his birth; and his father may be excused if he gave to his wife and son a romantic account of an affair of this nature. Such delicacy of sentiment and conduct as is here ascribed to these young and humble lovers is, it is to be feared, very rare in persons of any age or station, and would seem to require better authentication than can be found for the details of this story.-ED.] side, very early; but as my father was little | at home it had not much effect. They seldom conversed; for my father could not bear to talk of his affairs; and my mother, being unacquainted with books, cared not to talk of any thing else. Had my mother been more literate, they had been better companions. She might have sometimes introduced her unwelcome topick with more success, if she could have diversified her conversation. Of business she had no distinct conception; and therefore her discourse was composed only of complaint, fear, and suspicion. Neither of them ever tried to calculate the profits of trade, or the expenses of living. My mother concluded that we were poor, because we lost by some of our trades; but the truth was, that my father, having in the early part of his life contracted debts, never had trade sufficient to enable him to pay them, and to maintain his family: he got something, but not enough. My father considered tea as very expensive, and discouraged my mother from keeping company with the neighbours, and from paying visits and receiving them. She lived to say, many years after, that if the time were to pass again, she would not comply with such unsocial injunctions. It was not till about 1768, that I thought to calculate the returns of my father's trade, and by that estimate his probable profits. This, I believe, my parents never did."] I asked his old school-fellow, Mr. Hector, surgeon of Birmingham, if she was not vain of her son. He said, "she had too much good sense to be vain, but she knew her son's value." Her piety was not inferior to her understanding; and to her must be inscribed those early impressions of religion upon the mind of her son, from which the world afterwards derived so much benefit. He told me, that he remembered distinctly having had the first notice of heaven, "a place to which good people went," and hell, a place to which bad people went," communicated to him by her, when a little child in bed with her; and that it might be the better fixed in his memory, she sent him to repeat it to Thomas Jackson, their man-servant 2; he not being in the way, this was not done; but there was no occasion for any artificial aid for its preservation. [When he related this circumstance to Mrs. Piozzi, he added, that little people should be en 66 [This is told nearly in the same words in the Account of the Life, and is an additional proof of the authenticity of that little work.-ED.] 2 [Mrs. Piozzi says a workman, and, in this instance, her account is more likely to be accurate than Boswell's. This trifle is observed to justify thus early the editor's opinion, that even in the small matters in which Boswell delights to accuse Mrs. Piozzi of inaccuracy, she is sometimes probably as correct as he is.-ED.] couraged always to tell whatever Piozzi, they hear particularly striking, to p. 21, 22. some brother, sister, or servant, immediately before the impression is erased by the intervention of newer occurrences.] In following so very eminent a man from his cradle to his grave, every minute particular, which can throw light on the progress of his mind, is interesting. That he was remarkable, even in his earliest years, may easily be supposed; for to use his own words in his Life of Sydenham, "That the strength of his understanding, the accuracy of his discernment, and the ardour of his curiosity, might have been remarked from his infancy, by a diligent observer, there is no reason to doubt. For there is no instance of any man, whose history has been minutely related, that did not in every part of life discover the same proportion of intel- X lectual vigour." In all such investigations it is certainly unwise to pay too much attention to incidents which the credulous relate with eager satisfaction, and the more scrupulous or witty inquirer considers only as topicks of ridicule: yet there is a traditional story of the infant Hercules of Toryism, so curiously characteristick, that I shall not withhold it. It was communicated to me in a letter from Miss Mary Adye, of Lichfield. "When Dr. Sacheverel was at Lichfield, Johnson was not quite three years old. My grandfather Hammond observed him at the cathedral perched upon his father's shoulders, listening and gaping at the much celebrated preacher. Mr. Hammond asked Mr. Johnson how he could possibly think of bringing such an infant to church, and in the midst of so great a crowd. He answered, because it was impossible to keep him at home; for, young as he was, he believed he had caught the publick spirit and zeal for Sacheverel, and would have stayed for ever in the church, satisfied with beholding him 3." Nor can I omit a little instance of that jealous independence of spirit, and impetuosity of temper, which never forsook him. The fact was acknowledged to me by him 3 [The gossiping anecdotes of the Lichfield ladies are all apocryphal. Sacheverel, by his sentence pronounced in Feb. 1710, was interdicted for three years from preaching; so that he could not have preached at Lichfield while Johnson was under three years of age. But what decides the falsehood of Miss Adye's story is, that Sacheverel's triumphal progress through the midland counties was in 1710; and it appears by the books of the corporation of Lichfield, that he was received in that town and complimented by the attendance of the corporation, "and a present of three dozen of wine," on the 16th June, 1710; when the "infant Hercules of toryism" was just nine months old.-ED.] X Piozzi, p. 8, 9. self, upon the authority of his mother. | them for his child's. He added, "my faOne day, when the servant who used to be sent to school to conduct him home had not come in time, he set out by himself, though he was then so near-sighted, that he was obliged to stoop down on his hands and knees to take a view of the kennel before he ventured to step over it. His schoolmistress, afraid that he might miss his way, or fall into the kennel, or be run over by a cart, followed him at some distance. He happened to turn about and perceive her. Feeling her careful attention as an insult to his manliness, he ran back to her in a rage, and beat her, as well as his strength would permit 1. Of the power of his memory, for which he was all his life eminent to a degree almost incredible, the following early instance was told me in his presence at Lichfield, in 1776, by his step-daughter, Mrs. Lucy Porter, as related to her by his mother. When he was a child in petticoats, and had learnt to read, Mrs. Johnson one morning put the common prayer-book into his hands, pointed to the collect for the day, and said, "Sam, you must get this by heart." She went up stairs, leaving him to study it: but by the time she had reached the second floor, she heard him follow her. "What's the matter?" said she. "I can say it," he replied, and repeated it distinctly, though he could not have read it more than twice. ther was a foolish old man; that is to say, Young Johnson had the misfortune to be much afflicted with the scrophula, or king'sThere has been another story of his in- evil, which disfigured a countenance naturalfant precocity generally circulated, and gen- ly well formed, and hurt his visual nerves erally believed, the truth of which I am to so much, that he did not see at all with one refute upon his own authority. It is told, of his eyes, though its appearance was litthat, when a child of three years old, he tle different from that of the other. There chanced to tread upon a duckling, the elev- is amongst his prayers, one inscribed enth of a brood, and killed it; upon which," When my EYE was restored to its use," it is said, he dictated to his mother the following epitaph: "Here lies good master duck, Whom Samuel Johnson trod on; which ascertains a defect that many of his friends knew he had, though I never perceived it 3. I supposed him to be only near-sighted; and indeed I must observe, that in no other respect could I discern any defect in his vision; on the contrary, the force of his attention and perceptive quickness made him see and distinguish all manner of objects, whether of nature or of art, with a nicety that is rarely to be found. When he and I were travelling in the Highlands of Scotland, and I pointed out to him a mountain, which I observed resembled a cone, he corrected my inaccuracy, by show There is surely internal evidence that this little composition combines in it, what no child of three years old could produce, without an extension of its faculties by immediate inspiration; yet Mrs. Lucy Porter, Dr. Johnson's step-daughter, positively maintained to me, in his presence, that there could be no doubt of the truth of this anecdote, for she had heard it from his mother. 2 [This anecdote of the duck, though disproved So difficult is it to obtain an authentick re- by internal and external evidence, is one of those lation of facts, and such authority may there the authenticity of which Miss Seward persisted in be for errour; for he assured me, that his asserting; and she maintained a very wrongheadfather made the verses, and wished to passed hostility and paper war with Boswell on this [This story seems also disproved by internal evidence, for if Johnson was so blind as not to be able to see a kennel without stooping on his hands and knees, how could he distinguish a person following him at some distance?-ED.] and a similar subject (The verses on a sprig of myrtle), in which, as we shall see more fully hereafter, she was wrong every way.-ED.] 3 Speaking himself of the imperfection of one of his eyes, he said to Dr. Burney, "the dog was never good for much."-BURNEY. p. 11. ing me, that it was indeed pointed at the top, but that one side of it was larger than the other. And the ladies with whom he was acquainted agree, that no man was more nicely and minutely critical in the elegance of female dress. When I found that he saw the romantick beauties of Ilam, in Derbyshire, much better than I did, 1 told him that he resembled an able performer upon a bad instrument. How false and contemptible then are all the remarks which have been made to the prejudice either of his candour or of his philosophy, founded upon a suppoXsition that he was almost blind. It has been said that he contracted this grievous malady from his nurse. [His own acAccount count was, that Dr. Swinfen, told of Life, him, that the scrofulous sores which afflicted him proceeded from the bad humours of his nurse, whose son had the same distemper, and was likewise shortsighted, but both in a less degree (than he). His mother thought his diseases derived from her family 2. She visited him every day, and used to go different ways, that her assiduity might not expose her to ridicule, and often left her fan or glove behind, that she might have a pretence for coming back unexpected, but she never discovered any token of neglect. In ten weeks he was taken home a poor diseased infant, almost blind. Dr. Swinfen used to say, that he never knew any child reared with so much difficulty.] His mother,-yielding to the superstitious notion which, it is wonderful to think, prevailed so long in this country, as to the virtue of the regal touch; a notion which our kings encourAccount aged, and to which a man of such inquiry and such judgment as Carte could give credit-carried him to London [in Lent, 1712], where he was actually touched by queen Anne. Mrs. Johnson indeed, as Mr. Hector informed me, acted by the advice of the celebrated Sir John Floyer, then a physician in Lichfield. Johnson used to talk of this very frankly; and Mrs. Piozzi has preserved his very picturesque description of the scene, as it remained upon his fancy. Being asked if he could remember queen Anne,— "He had (he said) a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood." This touch, however, was without any effect. I ventured to say to him, of Life, p. 16. Piozzi, p. 10. 1 [Samuel Swinfen, who took a degree of doctor of medicine from Pembroke College in 1712. -HALL.] 2 [His mother and Dr. Swinfen were both perhaps wrong in their conjecture as to the origin of the disease; he more probably inherited it from his father, with the morbid melancholy which is so commonly an attendant on scrofulous habits.F.D.] in allusion to the political principles in which he was educated, and of which he ever retained some odour, that "his mother had not carried him far enough; she should have taken him to ROME 3." p. 16. [The following is his own recollection o. this journey.-"I was taken to London to be touched for the evil Account of Life, by queen Anne. I always retained some memory of this journey, though I was then but thirty months old. I remember a boy crying at the palace when I went to be touched. My mother was at Nicholson's, the famous bookseller in Little Britain. I remember a little dark room behind the kitchen, where the jackweight fell through a hole in the floor, into which I once slipped my leg. "Being asked, on which side of the shop was the counter?" I answered, 'on the left from the entrance,' many years after, and spoke not by guess but by memory. We went in the stage-coach, and returned in the waggon, as my mother said, because my cough was violent. The hope of saving a few shillings was no slight motive; for she, not having been accustomed to money, was afraid of such expenses as now seem very small. She sewed two guineas in her petticoat, lest she should be robbed. "We were troublesome to the passengers; but to suffer such inconveniences in the stage-coach was common in these days, to persons in much higher rank. She bought me a small silver cup and spoon, marked SAM. J., lest if they had been marked S. J., (Sarah being her name), they should, upon her death, have been taken from me. She bought me a speckled linen frock, which I knew afterwards by the name of my London frock. The cup was one of the last pieces of plate which dear4 Tetty sold in our distress. I have now the spoon. She bought at the same time two teaspoons, and till my manhood she had no more 5."] He was first taught to read English by Dame Oliver, a widow, who kept a school for young children in Lichfield. He told 3 [To the Pretender.—ED.] 4 [His wife, whom he called by this familiar contraction of Elizabeth.-ED.] [When Dr. Johnson, at an advanced age, recorded all these minute circumstances, he contemplated, we are told, writing the history of his own life, and probably intended to develope, from his own infant recollections, the growth and powers of the faculty of memory, which he possessed in so remarkable a degree. From the little details of his domestic history he perhaps meant also to trace the progressive change in the habits of the middle classes of society. But whatever may have been his motive, the Editor could not properly omit what Johnson thought worth preserving.-ED.] |