of Life, P. 14. Account 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 or 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; he not being in the way, this was not done; but there was no occasion for any artificial Piozzi, aid for its preservation. [When he related this cirp.21,22. [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.] p.21, 22. cumstance to Mrs. Piozzi, he added, that little people Piozzi, should be encouraged always to tell whatever they hear particularly striking, to 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 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 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 Sache verel, and would have staid for ever in the church, satisfied with beholding him1." 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 school-mistress, 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 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 prayerbook 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 66 [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.] 2 [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.] 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 precocity generally circulated, and generally believed, the truth of which I am to refute upon his own authority. It is told, 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; 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. So difficult is it to obtain an authentick relation of facts, and such authority may there be for errour; for he assured me, that his father made the verses, and wished to pass them for his child's. He added, "my father was a foolish old man; that is to say, foolish in talking of his children'." [He Piozzi, always seemed more mortified at the recollection of the bustle his parents made with his wit, than pleased with the thoughts of possessing it. "That (said he one day to Mrs. Piozzi) is the great misery of late marriages; the unhappy produce of them becomes the plaything [This anecdote of the duck, though disproved by internal and external evidence, is one of those the authenticity of which Miss Seward persisted in asserting; and she maintained a very wrongheaded hostility and paper war with Boswell on this 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.] p. 8, 9. p. 8, 9. Piozzi, of dotage: an old man's child (continued he) leads much such a life, I think, as a little boy's dog, teased with awkward fondness, and forced, perhaps, to sit up and beg, as we call it, to divert a company, who at last go away complaining of their disagreeable entertainment." In consequence of these maxims, and full of indignation against such parents as delight to produce their young ones early into the talking world, I have known Dr. Johnson give a good deal of pain by refusing to hear the verses that children could recite, or the songs they could sing; particularly to one friend who told him that his two sons should repeat Gray's Elegy to him alternately, that he might judge who had the happiest cadence. "No, pray, sir (said he), let the little dears both speak it at once; more noise will by that means be made, and the noise will be sooner over."] and Med. p. 27. Young Johnson had the misfortune to be much afflicted with the scrophula, or king's-evil, which disfigured a countenance naturally well formed, and hurt his visual nerves so much, that he did not see at all with one of his eyes, though its appearance was little different from that of the other. There is amongst Prayers his prayers, one inscribed "When my EYE was restored to its use," which ascertains a defect that many of his friends knew he had, though I never perceived it'. 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 Speaking himself of the imperfection of one of his eyes, he said to Dr. Burney, "the dog was never good for much."-BURNEY. |