BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON

Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September, N. S.* 1709. His father was Michael Johnson, of obscure extraction, who settled in Lichfield as a bookseller and stationer. His mother was Sarah Ford, descended of an ancient race of substantial yeomanry* in Warwickshire. They were well advanced in years when they married, and never had more than two children, both sons: Samuel, their first-born, and Nathanael, who died in his twenty-fifth year.

Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute inquiry, though the effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general sensation of gloomy wretchedness. From him, then, his son inherited, with some other qualities, "a vile melancholy," which, in his too strong expression of any disturbance of mind, "made him mad all his life, at least not sober." Michael was, however, forced by the narrowness of his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not only in his shop, but by occasionally resorting to several towns in the neighborhood. At that time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of England

*See Glossary for all asterisks.

1. Nathanael. Exposed in some dishonesty, when twenty-four or thereabouts, he wrote to his mother: "I know not nor do I much care in what way of life I shall hereafter live, but this I know, it shall be an honest one, and that it can't be more unpleasant than some part of my life past." The letter is given in full by Aleyn Lyell Reade.

2. Narrowness of his circumstances. "My father could not bear to talk of his affairs, and my mother, being unacquainted with books, cared not to talk of anything else. Of business she had no distinct conception; and therefore her discourse was composed only of complaint, fear, and suspicion." Johnson.

were very rare, so that there was not one even in Birmingham, in which town old Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market day. He was a pretty good Latin scholar,1 and a citizen so creditable as to be made one of the magistrates of Lichfield; and, being a man of good sense, and skill in his trade, he acquired a reasonable share of wealth, of which however he afterwards lost the greatest part, by engaging unsuccessfully in a manufacture of parchment. He was a zealous high-church* man and royalist, and retained his attachment to the unfortunate house of Stuart, though he reconciled himself, by arguments of expediency and necessity, to take the oaths imposed by the prevailing power.

Young Johnson had the misfortune to be much afflicted2 with the scrofula, 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. His mother, yielding to the superstitious notion, which, it is wonderful to think, prevailed so long in this country, as to the virtue of the regal touch, carried him to London, where he was actually touched by Queen Anne. Being asked if he could remember Queen Anne--he had, he said, "a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood." I ventured to say to him, in allusion to the political principles in which he was educated, and of which he ever retained some odor, that "his mother had not carried him far enough; she should have taken him to Rome."

He began to learn Latin with Mr. Hawkins, undermaster of Lichfield school, "a man," said he, "very skillful in his little way."

1. Latin scholar. A clergyman, writing from Trentham in 1716, says half-humorously of Michael: "Johnson, the Lichfield 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."

2. Much afflicted. "I remember my Aunt Nath. Ford told me when I was about years old that she would not have picked such

a poor creature up in the street." Johnson: Annals.

3. Rome. For some time the home of the exiled Stuart court, which maintained, of course, that the "royal touch" inhered only in the Stuarts and not in the sovereigns who had displaced them on the throne.

1725]

HIS LOVE OF ROMANCES

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He then rose to be under the care of Mr. Hunter, the headmaster, who, according to his account, "was very severe. "1 "He used," said he, "to beat us unmercifully; and he did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence. 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."

2

3

Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, who was long intimately acquainted with Dr. Johnson, and has preserved a few anecdotes concerning him, informs me, that "when a boy he was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry, and he retained his fondness for them through life; "so that," adds his Lordship, "spending part of a summer at my parsonage house in the country, he chose for his regular reading the old Spanish romance of Felixmarte of Hyrcania, in folio, which he read quite through. Yet I have heard him attribute to these extravagant fictions that unsettled turn of mind which prevented his ever fixing in any profession." [Johnson] used to mention one curious instance of his casual reading, when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned, in some preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity having been thus excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a great part

1. Very severe. "Abating his brutality, he was a very good master." Johnson, 1772. "No science can be communicated by mortal creatures without attention from the scholar; no attention can be obtained from children without the infliction of pain; and pain is never remembered without resentment." Johnson, quoted by Mrs. Piozzi. "I would rather have the rod to be the general terror to all than tell a child if you do thus or thus you will be more esteemed than your brothers and sisters." Johnson, 1773.

2. Dr. Percy. Thomas Percy (1729-1811), collector of ballads. "These barbarous productions of unpolished ages," as he called them, he refined and civilized to suit the fastidious taste of his day, and published in 1765 as the Reliques of Ancient Poetry. Hannah More called him "quite a sprightly modern instead of a rusty antique."

3. Romances of chivalry. Of Don Quixote, he writes, "When we laugh, our hearts inform us that he is not more ridiculous than ourselves, except that he tells what we have only thought."

of the book. What he read during these two years, he told me, was not works of mere amusement, "but all literature, sir, all ancient writers, all manly."

He went to Oxford and was entered a commoner* of Pembroke College on the 31st of October, 1728, being then in his nineteenth year. While he was at Lichfield in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with a gloom and despair which made existence misery. He told Mr. Paradise that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town clock. Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to overcome it by forcible exertions. He frequently walked to Birmingham and back again, and tried many other expedients, but all in vain. His distress became so intolerable that he applied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Lichfield, his godfather, and put into his hands a state of his case, written in Latin. Dr. Swinfen was so much struck with this paper that he showed it to several people. His daughter, Mrs. Desmoulins, who was many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson's house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much offended that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had reason to be offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately exposed a complaint of his young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the generality of mankind, is attended with contempt and disgrace.

I am aware that Johnson himself was too ready to call such a complaint by the name of madness. But there is surely a clear distinction between a disorder which affects only the imagination and spirits, while the judgment is sound, and a disorder by which the judgment itself is impaired. This distinction was made to me by the late Professor Gaubius of Leyden, in a conversation which I had with him several years ago. "If," said he, "a man tells me that he is grievously disturbed, for that he imagines he sees a ruffian coming against him with a drawn sword, though at the same time he is conscious it is a delusion, I pronounce him to have a disordered imagination; but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be mad."

1729]

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES

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The history of Johnson's mind as to religion is an important article. "Sunday," said he, "was a heavy day with 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. I fell into an inattention to religion 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; and still I find a great reluctance to go to church. I then became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much think against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life,1 expecting to find it a dull book, as such books generally are, and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry." From this time forward religion was the predominant object of his thoughts; though he lamented that his practice of its duties fell far short of what it ought to be.

His apartment in Pembroke College was that upon the second floor over the gateway. One day, while he was sitting in it quite alone, Dr. Panting, then master of the College, whom he called "a fine Jacobite fellow," overheard him uttering this soliloquy in his strong, emphatic voice: "Well, I have a mind to see what is done in other places of learning. I'll go and visit the Universities abroad. I'll go to France and Italy. I'll go to Padua.—And I'll mind my business. For an Athenian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads."

1. Serious Call to a Holy Life (1728) by the English clergyman William Law. "The best way," he says, "for anyone to know how much he ought to aspire after holiness is to consider, not how much will make his present life easy, but to ask himself how much will make him easy at the hour of death." His book develops this idea logically in regard to the minutest details of life.

2. An Athenian blockhead. When one John Gilbert Cooper was praised one day in Johnson's presence as a good scholar, Johnson retorted: "Yes, it cannot be denied that he has good materials for playing the fool and makes abundant use of them."