much good sense to be vain, but she knew her son's value." And as regards her piety, Johnson himself once mentioned that he remembered distinctly hearing his mother tell him, when a little child in bed with her, that Heaven was "a place to which good people went," and Hell "a place to which bad people went." This was the first time he had ever heard of either; and, to fix the information the better in his memory, she had sent the child to repeat what she had told him to Thomas Jackson, their man-servant. Much of what afterwards shot up in various forms in Johnson's later life must have had its seed-time in those bedroom instructions whispered to the child Samuel in the silence of the night. Notwithstanding the sterling qualities of both parents they do not seem to have worked very well together. My father and mother," says Johnson, "had not much happiness from each other. 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 anything else. Had my mother been more literate, they had been better companions. She might have sometimes introduced her unwelcome topic 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. 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." Johnson, in his youth, was much afflicted with the scrofula or king's evil, a distemper which he is absurdly said to have caught from his nurse. This disease had at one time rendered him almost blind; and for many years one of his eyes remained quite useless, though there was nothing peculiar about its appearance to mark the fact. Among his "Prayers and Meditations" there is one inscribed, When my EYE was restored to its use," thus indicating a defect which the very closest scrutiny would have failed to perceive. He was near-sighted, but by no means dull-sighted, all his life. At the age of thirty months he had been taken to London to be touched for the evil by Queen Anne: Boswell naïvely remarks that "the touch was of no effect." Being asked, in after life, if he remembered the Queen, Johnson said "he had a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn, recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood." It must not be forgotten that he wanted six months of being three years old at this period. Few persons, we should think, can see any object standing out as distinctly so far along "the dark backward and abysm of time." Johnson's first place of instruction was a Dame School taught by a widow named Oliver. A servant used to be sent to school to conduct him safely home; but one day it happened that the attendant did not arrive in time, so that Samuel had to set out on his return journey alone. The schoolmistress, however, followed him at a distance, keeping him in view all the way. The difficulties of the march were by no means contemptible; for the little fellow was then so short-sighted that he had to stoop down on his hands and knees to see the kennel before he dared venture to step over it. Yet he strode manfully forward, until, happening to turn round, he observed the Dame dogging him in the rear. This was a slight upon his power of self-government which was not to be borne: he ran back and beat her fiercely with his puny little fists. This stern determination to go alone, and this tendency to beat people who should offend him, remained as master-principles throughout all his future life; so true is it that "Childhood shows the man As morning shows the day." His next teacher was a master, whom he used familiarly to style Tom Brown, adding, "he published a spelling book, and dedicated it to the UNIVERSE; but I fear no copy of it can now be had" reminding one of the work which some French author had dedicated to POSTERITY, and of which Voltaire quietly remarked that it was "a letter which would never be delivered." He learned his first Latin with Mr. Hawkins, usher of Lichfield school; "a man," he said, "very skilful in his little way." Two years afterwards he passed into the hands of Mr. Hunter, the head-master, who, according to Johnson's own account, "was very severe, and wrongheadedly severe. He used," said he, "to beat us unmercifully; and he did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence; for he would beat a boy equally for not knowing a thing, as for neglecting to know it. He would ask a boy a question, and if he did not answer it, he would beat him, without considering whether he had an opportunity of knowing how to answer it. For instance, he would call up a boy and ask him Latin for a candlestick, which the boy could not expect to be asked. Now, sir, if a boy could answer every question, there would be no need of a master to teach him." But Hunter was a good Latin scholar, and Johnson was obliged to confess that his severity was often needed in his own case. "My master whipt me very well. Without that, sir, I should have done nothing." With every thrash of the cane, moreover, there came thundering down on the cowering victim's head the terrible words, "And this I do to save you from the gallows." Who knows, then, if, but for the stern Hunter's many floggings, this most distinguished pupil of his might not even now have been figuring in the Newgate Calendar, instead of on the pages of classic literature? But Hunter had reason to be proud of his scholar; for Johnson was the undisputed intellectual monarch of the Institution. His fellowpupils also readily acknowledged this supremacy; so much so that three faithful slaves used to come of a morning and carry him to school,-which was no joke, as the future Doctor was already beginning to give no uncertain signs of the renowned bulk of body that was to be. He engaged very little in the ordinary sports of the boys, his only amusement being, in the winter-time, to be pulled along the ice with a string tied round his body and guided by a bare-footed lad running before him. All this while the child's religious instruction had been faithfully and fondly, if not in every respect judiciously, superintended by his mother. "Sunday," says he, "was a heavy day to me when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read 'The Whole Duty of Man,' from a great part of which I could derive no instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which, from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of knowledge." He further adds, “I fell into an inattention to religion, or an indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so I was to go and find a seat in other churches; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit continued till my fourteenth year: I then became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much think against it." But what Keats says of poetry is equally true of religion: the genius of religion must work out its own salvation in a man. And although this side of Johnson's nature would thus appear to have been, during his boyhood, developed less wisely and harmoniously than could have been desired, it ought not to be doubted, at the same time, that it was the great but simple truths instilled into his infant heart that kept the religious feeling alive in him through all his future life; and that was the one thing needful with him, as it is with us all. Here is a little extract from one of those diaries which he seems to have kept from his cradle almost. It is dated October, 1719, when he was a lad only ten years old :-" Desidiae valedixi; sirenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversurus.” [I have said farewell to sloth, and mean henceforth to turn a deaf ear to her syren strains.] Such a manly little resolution from a mere child must have sprung from something quite as healthful and strong as any religious impulse could well be imagined to be. After an interval spent at the house of a relative, Johnson was, at the age of fifteen, sent to Stourbridge school, in Worcestershire. Mr. Wentworth, the master, was, he said, a very able man, but an idle man, and to me very severe; but I cannot blame him much. I was then a big boy; he saw I did not reverence him, and that he should get no honour by me. I had brought enough with me to carry me through; and all I should get at his school would be ascribed to my own labour, or to my former master. Yet he taught me a great deal." Of the difference in the kind of pro SCHOOL DAYS. gress made at the two schools he himself used to speak thus: "At one, I learned much in the school, but little from the master; in the other, I learned much from the master, but little in the school." In the midst of so much desultory occupation and idleness it would be indeed strange not to find some little love-makings on the part of our youthful Samuel. These were numerous about this time-many but transient. At Stourbridge school, for example, he had been caught by a certain Olivia Lloyd, a quaker young lady, to whom he addressed a copy of verses. The verses have been lost, but they doubtless did their work upon the fair one's heart. In default of the missing love-lay take the following, written later, but presumably very much of a piece with the lost strains : VERSES TO A LADY, ON RECEIVING FROM HER A SPRIG OF MYRTLE. "What hopes, what terrors does thy gift create, Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate! The myrtle, ensign of supreme command, Verses like these would not, it is to be feared, kindle any very ecstatic raptures in the breasts of most of the young ladies of our time; nevertheless we must try to do them justice. The day of Philanders and Melissas has gone for ever; but it was a good day enough so long as it lasted, and for the men and women who lived in it. Our love-poetry, indeed, moves to a very different music, fired with the lyric passion of Burns, or beating with Shelley's heart-throbs too mighty for words to express. Yet, |