Lichfield School.

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He began to learn Latin' with Mr. Hawkins, usher, or under-master of Lichfield school, ‘a man (said he) very skilful in his little way.' With him he continued two years', and then rose to be under the care of Mr. Hunter, the headmaster, who, according to his account, was very severe, and wrong-headedly 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.'

It is, however, but justice to the memory of Mr. Hunter to mention, that though he might err in being too severe, the school of Lichfield was very respectable in his time'.

1 'When we learned Propria quæ 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.

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. 25.

'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

The

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Johnson's school-fellows.

The late Dr. Taylor, Prebendary of Westminster, who was educated under him, told me, that he was an excellent master, and that his ushers were most of them men of eminence; that Holbrook, one of the most ingenious men, best scholars, and best preachers of his age, was usher during the greatest part of the time that Johnson was at school'. Then came Hague, of whom as much might be said, with the addition that he was an elegant poet. Hague was succeeded by Green, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, whose character in the learned world is well known'. In the same form with Johnson was Congreve', who afterwards became chaplain to Archbishop Boulter, and by that connection obtained good preferment in Ireland. He was a younger son of the ancient family of Congreve, in Staffordshire, of which the poet was a branch. His brother

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 on its tender knees 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 practice 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.'

1 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.

One of the contributors to the Athenian Letters. See Gent. Mag. liv. 276.

3

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.'

sold

sold the estate. There was also Lowe, afterwards Canon of Windsor'.'

Indeed Johnson was very sensible how much he owed to Mr. Hunter. Mr. Langton one day asked him how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time; he said, ' My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.' He told Mr. Langton, that while Hunter was flogging his boys unmercifully, he used to say, 'And this I do to save you from the gallows.' Johnson, upon all occasions, expressed his approbation of enforcing instruction by means of the rod. 'I would rather (said he)

'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 classfellows 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 school-house, 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.' '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.

have the rod to be the general terrour to all, to make them learn, than tell a child, if you do thus, or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters. The rod pro

duces an effect which terminates in itself. A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other'.'

When Johnson saw some young ladies in Lincolnshire who were remarkably well behaved, owing to their mother's strict discipline and severe correction', he exclaimed, in one of Shakspeare's lines a little varied,

'Rod, I will honour thee for this thy duty'.'

'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.

2 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.

''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;

That