Mr.Michael Johnson was a man of a 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 enquiry,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 the 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 neighbourhood,some of which were at a considerable distance from Lichfield.At that time booksellers'shops in the provincial towns of England 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,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 casuistical arguments of expediency and necessity,to take the oaths imposed by the prevailing power.
Johnson's mother was a woman of distinguished understanding.Iasked 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 inferiour 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 being in the way,this was not done;but there was no occasion for any artificial aid for its preservation.
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 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 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 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 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;If it had liv'd,it had been GOOD LUCK,For then we'd had an ODD ONE.'
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 stepdaughter,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.'
