p. 9. by Mrs. Johnson, "whom he would invite to the Riding?" and answered, "all the town now." He feasted the citizens with uncommon magnificence, and was the last but one that maintained the splendour of the Riding.] His mother was Sarah Ford, descended of an ancient race of substantial yeomanry in Warwickshire; [Mrs. Piozzi states her to Piozzi, have been the daughter of a gentleman in the country, such as there were many of in those days, who possessing, perhaps, one or two hundred pounds a year in land, lived on the profits, and sought not to increase their income.] They were well advanced in years when they married, [he past fifty, and she above forty,] and never had more than two children, both sons; Samuel, their first-born, who lived to be the illustrious character whose various excellence I am to endeavour to record, and Nathanael, who died in his twenty-fifth year1, [and of whose manly spirit Mrs. Piozzi heard his brother speak with pride and pleaThe two brothers did not, however, much delight in each other's company, being always rivals for their mother's fondness; and many of the severe reflections on domestic life in Rasselas took their source from its authour's keen recollections of his early years.] Piozzi, * p. 5, 6. sure. [The elder Johnson was, as his son informed Mrs. Piozzi, a very pious and worthy man, but wrongpositive, and afflicted with mela his business, however, leading hi much on horseback, contributed preservation of his bodily health, a tal sanity; which, when he stayed home, would sometimes be about way; and Dr. Johnson said, that w workshop, a detached building, ha half down for want of money to re his father was not less diligent to door every night, though he saw t body might walk in at the back pa knew that there was no security o by barring the front door. "This ( son) was madness, you may see, an have been discoverable in other in of the prevalence of imagination, poverty prevented it from playin tricks as riches and leisure enco Michael was a man of still larger s greater strength than his son, w reckoned very like him, but did not in talking much of his family—“ (says he) so little pleasure in recit anecdotes of beggary!" One day, h hearing Mrs. Piozzi praise a favourite "Why do you like that man's acqua so?" said he. "Because," repli "he is open and confiding, and t stories of his uncles and cousins: I Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of a large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins observed, carefully suppressed by dom of unsound substance are often discovered, professional delicacy. This is natural a there was in him a mixture of that disease, laudable; yet there are several important the nature of which eludes the most minute why the obscurity in which such facts ar inquiry, though the effects are well known buried may be regretted. Morally, w to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about wish to know, as far as may be permitte those things which agitate the greater part the nature of our own intellect, its power of mankind, and a general sensation of weaknesses;-medically, it might be pos gloomy wretchedness. From him then his early and systematic treatment, to avert gate the disease which, there is reason son inherited, with some other qualities, "a pose, is now often unknown or mistaken; vile melancholy," which in his too strongly, it would be desirable to have any a expression of any disturbance of Sept. 16, the mind, "made him mad all his life, at least not sober2." 1773. 'Nathanael was born in 1712, and died in 1737. Their father, Michael Johnson, was born at Cubley in Derbyshire, in 1656, and died at Lichfield, in 1731, at the age of seventy-six. Sarah Ford, his wife, was born at King's Norton, in the county of Worcester, in 1669, and died at Lichfield in January, 1759, in her ninetieth year.-King's Norton Dr. Johnson supposed to be in Warwickshire (see his inscription for his mother's tomb), but it is in Worcestershire, probably on the confines of the county of Warwick.-MALONE. [One of the most curious and important chapters in the history of the human mind is still to be written, that of hereditary insanity. The symptomatic facts by which the disease might be traced are generally either disregarded from ignorance of their real cause and character, or when tune, and of ascertaining with more prec |