in Worcestershire, and not, as the epitaph says, 'in agro Varvicensi.'
When Johnson a few days before his death burnt his papers, some
fragments of his _Annals_ escaped the flames. One of these was never
seen by Boswell; it was published in 1805 under the title of _An Account
of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, from his Birth to his Eleventh Year,
written by himself_. In this he says (p. 14), 'My mother had no value
for my father's relations; those indeed whom we knew of were much lower
than hers.' Writing to Mrs. Thrale on his way to Scotland he said: 'We
changed our horses at Darlington, where Mr. Cornelius Harrison, a
cousin-german of mine, was perpetual curate. He was the only one of my
relations who ever rose in fortune above penury, or in character above
neglect.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 105. His uncle Harrison he described as
'a very mean and vulgar man, drunk every night, but drunk with little
drink, very peevish, very proud, very ostentatious, but luckily not
rich.' _Annals_, p. 28. In _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. x. 465, is given
the following extract of the marriage of Johnson's parents from the
Register of Packwood in Warwickshire:--
'1706. Mickell Johnsones of lichfield and Sara ford maried June the
9th.'
[115] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 3) records that Johnson told her that 'his
father was wrong-headed, positive, and afflicted with melancholy.'
[116] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_, 3rd edit. p. 213 [Sept. 16].
BOSWELL.
[117] Stockdale in his _Memoirs_, ii. 102, records an anecdote told him
by Johnson of 'the generosity of one of the customers of his father.
"This man was purchasing a book, and pressed my father to let him have
it at a far less price than it was worth. When his other topics of
persuasion failed, he had recourse to one argument which, he thought,
would infallibly prevail:--You know, Mr. Johnson, that I buy an almanac
of you every year."'
[118] Extract of a letter, dated 'Trentham, St. Peter's day, 1716,'
written by the Rev. George Plaxton, Chaplain at that time to Lord Gower,
which may serve to show the high estimation in which the Father of our
great Moralist was held: 'Johnson, the Litchfield Librarian, is now
here; he propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth
knowledge to its just height; all the Clergy here are his Pupils, and
suck all they have from him; Allen cannot make a warrant without his
precedent, nor our quondam John Evans draw a recognizance _sine
directione Michaelis_.' _Gentleman's Magazine_, October, 1791. BOSWELL.
[119] In _Notes and Queries_, 3rd S. v. 33, is given the following
title-page of one of his books: '[Greek: Pharmako-Basauos]: _or the
Touchstone of Medicines, etc_. By Sir John Floyer of the City of
Litchfield, Kt., M.D., of Queen's College, Oxford. London: Printed for
Michael Johnson, Bookseller, and are to be sold at his shops at
Litchfield and Uttoxiter, in Staffordshire; and Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in
Leicestershire, 1687.'
[120] Johnson writing of his birth says: 'My father being that year
sheriff of Lichfield, and to ride the circuit of the county [Mr. Croker
suggests city, not being aware that 'the City of Lichfield was a county
in itself.' See Harwood's _Lichfield_, p. 1. In like manner, in the
Militia Bill of 1756 (_post_ 1756) we find entered, 'Devonshire with
Exeter City and County,' 'Lincolnshire with Lincoln City and County']
next day, which was a ceremony then performed with great pomp, he was
asked by my mother 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.'
_Annals_, p. 10. He served the office of churchwarden in 1688; of
sheriff in 1709; of junior bailiff in 1718; and senior bailiff in 1725.'
Harwood's _Lichfield_, p. 449.
[121] 'My father and mother 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 maintain his family; he got something, but not enough.'
_Annals_, p. 14. Mr. Croker noticing the violence of Johnson's language
against the Excise, with great acuteness suspected '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 22nd 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 offends, you do not lay an
information against him, but send an affidavit of the fact, that he may
be prosecuted in the Exchequer.'
[122] See _post_, March 27, 1775.
[123] 'I remember, that being in bed with my mother one morning, I was
told by her of the two places to which the inhabitants of this world
were received after death: one a fine place filled with happiness,
called Heaven; the other, a sad place, called Hell. That this account
much affected my imagination I do not remember.' _Annals_, p. 19.
[124] Johnson's _Works_, vi. 406.
[125] Mr. Croker disbelieves the story altogether. 'Sacheverel,' he
says, '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. Sacheverel,
indeed, made a triumphal progress through the midland counties 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 June 16, 1710;
but then "the _infant Hercules of Toryism_" was just _nine months_ old.'
It is quite possible that the story is in the main correct. Sacheverel
was received in Lichfield in 1710 on his way down to Shropshire to take
possession of a living. At the end of the suspension in March 1713 he
preached a sermon in London, for which, as he told Swift, 'a book-seller
gave him £100, intending to print 30,000' (Swift's _Journal to Stella_,
April 2, 1713). It is likely enough that either on his way up to town or
on his return journey he preached at Lichfield. In the spring of 1713
Johnson was three years old.
[126] See _post_, p. 48, and April 25,1778 note; and Boswell's
_Hebrides_, Oct. 28, 1773.
[127] _Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson_, by Hester Lynch Piozzi, p. 11. Life of
Dr. Johnson_, by Sir John Hawkins, p. 6. BOSWELL.
[128] 'My father had much vanity which his adversity hindered from being
fully exerted.' _Annals_, p. 14.
[129] This anecdote of the duck, though disproved by internal and
external evidence, has nevertheless, upon supposition of its truth, been
made the foundation of the following ingenious and fanciful reflections
of Miss Seward, amongst the communications concerning Dr. Johnson with
which she has been pleased to favour me: 'These infant numbers contain
the seeds of those propensities which through his life so strongly
marked his character, of that poetick talent which afterwards bore such
rich and plentiful fruits; for, excepting his orthographick works, every
thing which Dr. Johnson wrote was Poetry, whose essence consists not in
numbers, or in jingle, but in the strength and glow of a fancy, to which
all the stores of nature and of art stand in prompt administration; and
in an eloquence which conveys their blended illustrations in a language
"more tuneable than needs or rhyme or verse to add more harmony."
'The above little verses also shew that superstitious bias which "grew
with his growth, and strengthened with his strength," and, of late years
particularly, injured his happiness, by presenting to him the gloomy
side of religion, rather than that bright and cheering one which gilds
the period of closing life with the light of pious hope.'
This is so beautifully imagined, that I would not suppress it. But like
many other theories, it is deduced from a supposed fact, which is,
indeed, a fiction. BOSWELL.
[130] _Prayers and Meditations_, p. 27. BOSWELL.
[131] Speaking himself of the imperfection of one of his eyes, he said
to Dr. Burney, 'the dog was never good for much.' MALONE.
[132] Boswell's _Hebrides_, Sept. 1, 1773.
[133] 'No accidental position of a riband,' wrote Mrs. Piozzi, 'escaped
him, so nice was his observation, and so rigorous his demands of
propriety.' Piozzi's _Anec_. p. 287. Miss Burney says:--
'Notwithstanding Johnson is sometimes so absent and always so
near-sighted, he scrutinizes into every part of almost everybody's
appearance [at Streatham].' And again she writes:--'his blindness is as
much the effect of absence [of mind] as of infirmity, for he sees
wonderfully at times. He can see the colour of a lady's top-knot, for he
very often finds fault with it.' Mme. D'Arblays _Diary_, i. 85, ii. 174.
'He could, when well, distinguish the hour on Lichfield town-clock.'
_Post_, p. 64.
[134] See _post_, Sept. 22, 1777.
[135] This was Dr. Swinfen's opinion, who seems also to have attributed
Johnson's short-sightedness to the same cause. 'My mother,' he says,
'thought my diseases derived from her family.' _Annals_, p. 12. When he
was put out at nurse, 'She visited me,' he says, 'every day, and used to
go different ways, that her assiduity might not expose her to ridicule.'
[136] In 1738 Carte published a masterly 'Account of Materials, etc.,
for a History of England with the method of his undertaking.' (_Gent.
Mag_. viii. 227.) He proposed to do much of what has been since done
under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. He asked for
subscriptions to carry on his great undertaking, for in its researches
it was to be very great. In 1744 the City of London resolved to
subscribe £50 for seven years (ib. xiv: 393). In vol. i. of his history,
which only came down to the reign of John (published in 1748), he went
out of his way to assert that the cure by the king's touch was not due
to the 'regal _unction_'; for he had known a man cured who had gone over
to France, and had been there 'touched by the eldest lineal descendant
of a race of kings who had not at that time been crowned or _anointed_.'
(ib. xviii. 13.) Thereupon the Court of Common Council by a unanimous
vote withdrew its subscription, (ib. 185.) The old Jacobites maintained
that the power did not descend to Mary, William, or Anne. It was for
this reason that Boswell said that Johnson should have been taken to
Rome; though indeed it was not till some years after he was 'touched' by
Queen Anne that the Pretender dwelt there. The Hanoverian kings never
'touched.' The service for the ceremony was printed in the _Book of
Common Prayer_ as late as 1719. (_Penny Cyclo_. xxi. 113.) 'It appears
by the newspapers of the time,' says Mr. Wright, quoted by Croker, 'that
on March 30, 1712, two hundred persons were touched by Queen Anne.'
Macaulay says that 'Charles the Second, in the course of his reign,
touched near a hundred thousand persons.... The expense of the ceremony
was little less than ten thousand pounds a year.' Macaulay's
_England_, ch. xiv.
[137] See _post_, p. 91, note.
[138] _Anecdotes_, p. 10. BOSWELL.
[139] Johnson, writing of Addison's schoolmasters, says:--'Not to name
the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature is a kind of
historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously diminished. I
would therefore trace him through the whole process of his education.'
Johnson's _Works_, vii. 418.
[140] Neither the British Museum nor the Bodleian Library has a copy.
[141] 'When we learned _Propria qua maribus_, we were examined in the
Accidence; particularly we formed verbs, that is, went through the same
person in all the moods and tenses. This was very difficult to me, and I
was once very anxious about the next day, when this exercise was to be
performed in which I had failed till I was discouraged. My mother
encouraged me, and I proceeded better. When I told her of my good
escape, "We often," said she, dear mother! "come off best when we are
most afraid." She told me that, once when she asked me about forming
verbs I said, "I did not form them in an ugly shape." "You could not,"
said she "speak plain; and I was proud that I had a boy who was forming
verbs" These little memorials soothe my mind.' _Annals_, p. 22.
[142] 'This was the course of the school which I remember with pleasure;
for I was indulged and caressed by my master; and, I think, really
excelled the rest.' _Annals_, p. 23.
[143] Johnson said of Hunter:--'Abating his brutality, he was a very
good master;' _post_. March 21, 1772. Steele in the _Spectator_, No.
157, two years after Johnson's birth, describes these savage tyrants of
the grammar-schools. 'The boasted liberty we talk of,' he writes, 'is
but a mean reward for the long servitude, the many heartaches and
terrors to which our childhood is exposed in going through a grammar
school.... No one who has gone through what they call a great school but
must remember to have seen children of excellent and ingenuous natures
(as has afterwards appeared in their manhood); I say no man has passed
through this way of education but must have seen an ingenuous creature
expiring with shame, with pale looks, beseeching sorrow and silent
tears, throw up its honest eyes and kneel or its tender kneeds to an
inexorable blockhead to be forgiven the false quantity of a word in
making a Latin verse.' Likely enough Johnson's roughness was in part due
to this brutal treatment; for Steele goes on to say:--'It is wholly to
this dreadful practise that we may attribute a certain hardiness and
ferocity which some men, though liberally educated, carry about them in
all their behaviour. To be bred like a gentleman, and punished like a
malefactor, must, as we see it does, produce that illiberal sauciness
which we see sometimes in men of letters.'
[144] Johnson described him as 'a peevish and ill-tempered man,' and not
so good a scholar or teacher as Taylor made out. Once the boys perceived
that he did not understand a part of the Latin lesson; another time,
when sent up to the upper-master to be punished, they had to complain
that when they 'could not get the passage,' the assistant would not help
them. _Annals_, pp. 26, 32.
[145] One of the contributors to the _Athenian Letters_. See _Gent.
Mag_. liv. 276.
[146] Johnson, _post_, March 22, 1776, describes him as one 'who does
not get drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy.'
[147] A tradition had reached Johnson through his school-fellow Andrew
Corbet that Addison had been at the school and had been the leader in a
barring out. (Johnson's _Works_, vii. 419.) Garrick entered the school
about two years after Johnson left. According to Garrick's biographer,
Tom Davies (p. 3), 'Hunter was an odd mixture of the pedant and the
sportsman. Happy was the boy who could slily inform his offended master
where a covey of partridges was to be found; this notice was a certain
pledge of his pardon.' Lord Campbell in his _Lives of the Chief
Justices_, ii. 279, says:--'Hunter is celebrated for having flogged
seven boys who afterwards sat as judges in the superior courts at
Westminster at the same time. Among these were Chief Justice Wilmot,
Lord Chancellor Northington, Sir T. Clarke, Master of the Rolls, Chief
Justice Willes, and Chief Baron Parker. It is remarkable that, although
Johnson and Wilmot were several years class-fellows at Lichfield, there
never seems to have been the slightest intercourse between them in after
life; but the Chief Justice used frequently to mention the Lexicographer
as "a long, lank, lounging boy, whom he distinctly remembered to have
been punished by Hunter for idleness." Lord Campbell blunders here.
Northington and Clarke were from Westminster School (Campbell's
_Chancellors_, v. 176). The schoolhouse, famous though it was, was
allowed to fall into decay. A writer in the _Gent. Mag_. in 1794 (p.
413) says that 'it is now in a state of dilapidation, and unfit for the
use of either the master or boys.'
[148] Johnson's observation to Dr. Rose, on this subject, deserves to be
recorded. Rose was praising the mild treatment of children at school, at
a time when flogging began to be less practised than formerly: 'But
then, (said Johnson,) they get nothing else: and what they gain at one
end, they lose at the other.' BURNEY. See _post_, under Dec. 17, 1775.
[149] This passage is quoted from Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 24, 1773.
Mr. Boyd had told Johnson that Lady Errol did not use force or fear in
educating her children; whereupon he replied, 'Sir, she is wrong,' and
continued in the words of the text.
Gibbon in his _Autobiography_ says:--'The domestic discipline of our
ancestors has been relaxed by the philosophy and softness of the age:
and if my father remembered that he had trembled before a stern parent,
it was only to adopt with his son an opposite mode of behaviour.'
Gibbon's _Works_, i. 112. Lord Chesterfield writing to a friend on Oct.
18, 1752, says:--'Pray let my godson never know what a blow or a
whipping is, unless for those things for which, were he a man, he would
deserve them; such as lying, cheating, making mischief, and meditated
malice.' Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_, iv. 130.
[150] Johnson, however, hated anything that came near to tyranny in the
management of children. Writing to Mrs. Thrale, who had told him that
she had on one occasion gone against the wish of her nurses, he
said:--'That the nurses fretted will supply me during life with an
additional motive to keep every child, as far as is possible, out of a
nurse's power. A nurse made of common mould will have a pride in
overcoming a child's reluctance. There are few minds to which tyranny is
not delightful; power is nothing but as it is felt, and the delight of
superiority is proportionate to the resistance overcome.' _Piozzi
Letters_, ii. 67.
[151] 'Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed.' 2 Henry VI, act iv.
sc. 10. John Wesley's mother, writing of the way she had brought up her
children, boys and girls alike, says:--'When turned a year old (and some
before) they were taught to fear the rod, and to cry softly; by which
means they escaped abundance of correction they might otherwise have
had.' Wesley's _Journal_, i. 370.
[152] 'There dwelt at Lichfield a gentleman of the name of Butt, to
whose house on holidays he was ever welcome. The children in the family,
perhaps offended with the rudeness of his behaviour, would frequently
call him the great boy, which the father once overhearing said:--'You
call him the great boy, but take my word for it, he will one day prove a
great man.' Hawkins's _Johnson_, p. 6.
[153] See _post_, March 22, 1776 and Johnson's visit to Birmingham in
Nov. 1784.
[154] 'You should never suffer your son to be idle one minute. I do not
call play, of which he ought to have a good share, idleness; but I mean
sitting still in a chair in total inaction; it makes boys lazy and
indolent.' Chesterfield's _Misc. Works_, iv. 248.
[155] The author of the _Reliques_.
[156] The summer of 1764.
[157] Johnson, writing of _Paradise Lost_, book ii. l. 879, says:--'In
the history of _Don Bellianis_, when one of the knights approaches, as I
remember, the castle of Brandezar, the gates are said to open, _grating
harsh thunder upon their brazen hinges_.' Johnson's _Works_, v. 76. See
_post_, March 27, 1776, where 'he had with him upon a jaunt Il Palmerino
d'Inghilterra.' Prior says of Burke that 'a very favourite study, as he
once confessed in the House of Commons, was the old romances, _Palmerin
of England_ and _Don Belianis of Greece_, upon which he had wasted much
valuable time.' Prior's _Burke_, p. 9.
[158] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 2) says that the uncle was Dr. Joseph Ford 'a
physician of great eminence.' The son, Parson Ford, was Cornelius. In
Boswell's _Hebrides_, Oct. 15, 1773, Johnson mentions an uncle who very
likely was Dr. Ford. In _Notes and Queries_, 5th S. v. 13, it is shown
that by the will of the widow of Dr. Ford the Johnsons received £200 in
1722. On the same page the Ford pedigree is given, where it is seen that
Johnson had an uncle Cornelius. It has been stated that 'Johnson was
brought up by his uncle till his fifteenth year.' I understand Boswell
to say that Johnson, after leaving Lichfield School, resided for some
time with his uncle before going to Stourbridge.
[159] He is said to be the original of the parson in Hogarth's _Modern
Midnight Conversation_. BOSWELL.
In the _Life of Fenton_ Johnson describes Ford as 'a clergyman at that
time too well known, whose abilities, instead of furnishing convivial
merriment to the voluptuous and dissolute, might have enabled him to
excel among the virtuous and the wise.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 57.
Writing to Mrs. Thrale on July 8, 1771, he says, 'I would have been glad
to go to Hagley [close to Stourbridge] for I should have had the
opportunity of recollecting past times, and wandering _per montes notos
et flumina nota_, of recalling the images of sixteen, and reviewing my
conversations with poor Ford.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 42. See also _post_,
May 12, 1778.
[160] See _post_, April 20, 1781.
[161] As was likewise the Bishop of Dromore many years afterwards.
BOSWELL.
[162] Mr. Hector informs me, that this was made almost _impromptu_, in
his presence. BOSWELL.
[163] This he inserted, with many alterations, in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, 1743 [p. 378]. BOSWELL. The alterations are not always for
the better. Thus he alters
'And the long honours of a lasting name'
into
'And fir'd with pleasing hope of endless fame.'
[164] Settle was the last of the city-poets; _post_, May 15, 1776.
[165] 'Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great.' Dunciad, i. 141.
[166] Some young ladies at Lichfield having proposed to act _The
Distressed Mother_, Johnson wrote this, and gave it to Mr. Hector to
convey it privately to them. BOSWELL. See _post_, 1747, for _The
Distressed Mother_.
[167] Yet he said to Boswell:--'Sir, in my early years I read very hard.
It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at
eighteen as I do now' (_post_, July 21, 1763). He told Mr. Langton, that
'his great period of study was from the age of twelve to that of
eighteen' (Ib. note). He told the King that his reading had later on
been hindered by ill-health (_post_, Feb. 1767).
[168] Hawkins (_Life_, p. 9) says that his father took him home,
probably with a view to bring him up to his own trade; for I have heard
Johnson say that he himself was able to bind a book. 'It were better
bind books again,' wrote Mrs. Thrale to him on Sept. 18, 1777, 'as you
did one year in our thatched summer-house.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 375. It
was most likely at this time that he refused to attend his father to
Uttoxeter market, for which fault he made atonement in his old age
(_post_, November, 1784).
[169] Perhaps Johnson had his own early reading in mind when he thus
describes Pope's reading at about the same age. 'During this period of
his life he was indefatigably diligent and insatiably curious; wanting
health for violent, and money for expensive pleasures, and having
excited in himself very strong desires of intellectual eminence, he
spent much of his time over his books; but he read only to store his
mind with facts and images, seizing all that his authors presented with
undistinguishing voracity, and with an appetite for knowledge too eager
to be nice.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 239.
[170] Andrew Corbet, according to Hawkins. Corbet had entered Pembroke
College in 1727. Dr. Swinfen, Johnson's god-father, was a member of the
College. I find the name of a Swinfen on the books in 1728.
[171] In the Caution Book of Pembroke College are found the two
following entries:--
'Oct. 31, 1728. Recd. then of Mr. Samuel Johnson Commr. of Pem. Coll. ye
summ of seven Pounds for his Caution, which is to remain in ye Hands of
ye Bursars till ye said Mr. Johnson shall depart ye said College leaving
ye same fully discharg'd.
Recd. by me, John Ratcliff, Bursar.'
'March 26, 1740. At a convention of the Master and Fellows to settle the
accounts of the Caution it appear'd that the Persons Accounts
underwritten stood thus at their leaving the College:
Caution not Repay'd
Mr. Johnson £7 0 0
Battells not discharg'd
Mr. Johnson £7 0 0