ever, he afterwards lost the greatest part, by engaging unsuccessfully (1) in a manufacture of parchment. (2) He was a zealous high-churchman and royalist, and retained his attachment to the unfortunate house or Stuart, though he reconciled himself, by casuistical arguments of expediency and necessity, to take the oaths imposed by the prevailing power.

There is a circumstance in his life somewhat romantic, but so well authenticated, that I shall not amit 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

(1) In this undertaking, nothing prospered; they had 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. - Gent. Mag., vol. lv. p. 100.

(2) 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 I 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 suspicion. 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. Mi chael Johnson, the tanner, notwithstanding the facts were fairly against him, the Board direct that the next time he offends, 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 re collected that M. Johnson was, this very year, chief magistrate of the city.CROKER.

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 humanity, went to her and offered to marry 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.

She departed this Life

20th of September, 1694.

JOHNSON's mother was a woman of distinguished understanding. 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 ascribed 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: he not

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being in the way, this was not done; but there was no occasion for any artificial aid for its preservation.

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 intellectual 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 topics of ridicule; yet there is a traditional story of the infant Hercules of toryism, so curiously characteristic, that I shall not withhold it. It was com municated to me in a letter from Miss Mary Ady 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 public spirit and zeal for Sacheverel, and would have staid for ever in the church, satisfied with beholding him." (')

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 himself, upon the authority of his mother. One 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.

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

(1) 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 of June, 1710; when the "infant Hercules of toryism" was just nine months old. CROKER.

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 following 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.

But there has been another story of his infant pre-
cocity generally circulated, and generally believed,
the truth of which I am to refute upon his own au-
thority. It is told (1) that, when a child of three
years old, he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the
eleventh of a brood, and killed it; upon which, it
is said, he dictated to his mother the following
epitaph :-

"Here lies good master duck,

Whom Samuel Johnson trod on;
If it had lived, it had been good luck,
For then we'd had an odd one."

There is surely internal evidence that this little com-
position combines in it, what no child of three years
old could produce, without an extension of its facul-
ties 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

(1) Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, by Hester Lynch Piozzi,
p. 11.; Life of Dr, Johnson, by Sir John Hawkins, p. 6.