THE

LIFE

OF

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D.

Account

of Life,

SAMUEL JOHNSON was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September, N. S. 1709, [as he himself states, adding, "that his mother had a p. 9. very difficult and dangerous labour, and was assisted by George Hector, a man-midwife of great reputation. He was born almost dead 1, and could not cry for some time."] His initiation into the Christian church was not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St. Mary's parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his birth: his father is there styled Gentleman, a circumstance of which an ignorant panegyrist has praised him for not being proud; when the truth is, that the appellation of Gentleman, though now lost in the indiscriminate assumption of Esquire, was commonly taken by those who could not boast of gentility 2. His father was Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, who settled in Lichfield as a bookseller and

1

[To have been born almost dead has been related of many eminent men, amongst others of Addison, Lord Lyttelton, and Voltaire.-ED.]

2 [The title Gentleman had still, in 1709, some degree of its original meaning, and as Mr. Johnson served the office of sheriff of Lichfield in that year, he seems to have been fully entitled to it. The Doctor, at his entry on the books of Pembroke college, and at his matriculation, designated himself as filius generosi.-ED.]

VOL. I.

B

of Life,

p. 2.

Account stationer. [He-being that year sheriff of Lichfield, and to ride the circuit of the county the day after his son's birth, which was a ceremony then performed with great pomp, was asked by Mrs. Johnson, "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.] His mother was Sarah Ford, descended of an ancient race of subPiozzi, stantial yeomanry in Warwickshire; [Mrs. Piozzi states her to have been the daughter of a gentleman in the country, such as there were many of in those days, who possessing, perhaps, one or two hundred pounds a year in land, lived on the profits, and sought

p. 9.

[There seems some difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory opinion as to Michael Johnson's real condition and circumstances. That in the latter years of his life he was poor, is certain; and Doctor Johnson (in the "Account of his early Life," not only admits the general fact of poverty, but gives several instances of what may be called indigence: yet, on the other hand, there is evidence that for near fifty years he occupied a respectable rank amongst his fellow-citizens, and appears in the annals of Lichfield on occasions not bespeaking poverty. In 1687, a subscription for recasting the cathedral bells was set on foot, headed by the bishop, dean, &c. aided by the neighbouring gentry: Michael Johnson's name stands the twelfth in the list; and his contribution, though only 10s., was not comparatively contemptible; for no one, except the bishop and dean, gave so much as 101. Baronets and knights gave a guinea, or two, and the great body of the contributors gave less than Johnson. (Harwood's Lichfield, p. 69.) In 1694, we find him burying in the cathedral, and placing a marble stone over a young woman in whose fate he was interested. His house, a handsome one, and in one of the best situations in the town, was his own freehold; and he appears to have added to it, for we find in the books of the corporation the following entry: "1708, July 13. Agreed, that Mr. Michael Johnson, bookseller, have a lease of his encroachment of his house in Sadler's-street, for forty years, at 2s. 6d. per an." And this lease, at the expiration of the forty years, was renewed to the Doctor as a mark of the respect of his fellow-citizens. In 1709, Michael Johnson served the office of sheriff of the county of the city of Lichfield. In 1718, he was elected junior bailiff; and in 1725, senior bailiff, or chief magistrate. Thus respected and apparently thriving in Lichfield, the following extract of a letter, written by the Rev. George Plaxton, chaplain to Lord Gower, will show the high estimation in which the father of our great moralist was held in the neighbouring country: "Trentham, St. Peter's day, 1716. 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; Allen cannot make a warrant without his precedent, nor our quondam John Evans draw a recognizance sine directione Michaelis." (Gentleman's Magazine, October, 1791.) On the whole, it seems probable that the growing expenses of a family, and losses in trade, had in his latter years reduced Mr. Johnson, from the state of competency which he had before enjoyed, to very narrow circumstances.-ED.]

p. 5.

not to increase their income.] They were well ad- Piozzi, vanced in years when they married, [he past fifty, and she above forty,] and never had more than two children, both sons; Samuel, their first-born, who lived to be the illustrious character whose various excellence I am to endeavour to record, and Nathanael, who died in his twenty-fifth year1, [and of whose Piozzi, manly spirit Mrs. Piozzi heard his brother speak with P. 5, 6. pride and pleasure. The two brothers did not, however, much delight in each other's company, being always rivals for their mother's fondness; and many of the severe reflections on domestic life in Rasselas took their source from its author's keen recollections of his early years.]

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 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,

66

p.

"a vile melancholy," which in his too strong expres- Sept. 16, sion of any disturbance of the mind, "made him mad 1773. all his life, at least not sober."

1 Nathanael was born in 1712, and died in 1737. Their father, Michael Johnson, was born at Cubley in Derbyshire, in 1656, and died at Lichfield, in 1731, at the age of seventy-six. Sarah Ford, his wife, was born at King's Norton, in the county of Worcester, in 1669, and died at Lichfield in January, 1759, in her ninetieth year.-King's Norton Dr. Johnson supposed to be in Warwickshire (see his inscription for his mother's tomb), but it is in Worcestershire, probably on the confines of the county of Warwick.-MALONE.

2 [One of the most curious and important chapters in the history of the human mind is still to be written, that of hereditary insanity. The symptomatic facts by which the disease might be traced are generally either disregarded from ignorance of their real cause and character, or when observed, carefully suppressed by domestic or professional delicacy. This is natural and even laudable; yet there are several important reasons why the obscurity in which such facts are usually buried may be regretted. Morally, we should wish

Piozzi,

[The elder Johnson was, as his son informed Mrs. p. 2, 5. Piozzi, a very pious and worthy man, but wrong

headed, positive, and afflicted with melancholy: his business, however, leading him to be much on horseback, contributed to the preservation of his bodily health, and mental sanity; which, when he stayed long at home, would sometimes be about to give way; and Dr. Johnson said, that when his workshop, a detached building, had fallen half down for want of money to repair it, his father was not less diligent to lock the door every night, though he saw that any body might walk in at the back part, and knew that there was no security obtained by barring the front door. "This (said his son) was madness, you may see, and would have been discoverable in other instances of the prevalence of imagination, but that poverty prevented it from playing such tricks as riches and leisure encourage. Michael was a man of still larger size and greater strength than his son, who was reckoned very like him, but did not delight in talking much of his family" One has (says he) so little pleasure in reciting the anecdotes of beggary!" One day, however, hearing Mrs. Piozzi praise a favourite friend: "Why do you like that man's acquaintance so?" said he. Because," replied she, "he is open and confiding, and tells me

66

"

to know, as far as may be permitted to us, the nature of our own intellect, its powers and its weaknesses;-medically, it might be possible, by early and systematic treatment, to avert or mitigate the disease which, there is reason to suppose, is now often unknown or mistaken;-legally, it would be desirable to have any additional means of discriminating between guilt and misfortune, and of ascertaining with more precision the nice bounds which divide moral guilt from what may be called physical errors;-and in the highest and most important of all the springs of human thought or action, it would be consolatory and edifying to be able to distinguish with greater certainty rational faith and judicious piety, from the enthusiastic confidence or the gloomy despondence of disordered imaginations. The memory of every man who has lived, not inattentively, in society, will furnish him with instances to which these considerations might have been usefully applied. But in reading the life of Doctor Johnson (who was conscious of the disease and of its cause, and of whose blood there remains no one whose feelings can be now offended), they should be kept constantly in view; not merely as a subject of general interest, but as elucidating and explaining many of the errors, peculiarities, and weaknesses of that extraordinary man.- -ED.]

66

p. 2, 5.

stories of his uncles and cousins: I love the light Piozzi, parts of a solid character." 'Nay, if you are for family history (said Dr. Johnson, good-humouredly), I can fit you: I had an uncle, Cornelius Ford, who, npon a journey, stopped and read an inscription written on a stone he saw standing by the way-side, set up, as it proved, in honour of a man who had leaped a certain leap thereabouts, the extent of which was specified upon the stone: Why now, said my uncle, I could leap it in my boots; and he did leap it in his boots. I had likewise another uncle, Andrew (continued he), my father's brother, who kept the ring in Smithfield, where they wrestled and boxed, for a whole year, and never was thrown or conquered. Here now are 'uncles for you, mistress, if that's the way to your heart.”]

6

[Miss Seward, who latterly showed a great deal of malevolence towards Johnson, delighted to repeat a story that one of his uncles had suffered the last penalty of the law. "Shortly after Mr. Porter's death, Johnson asked his mother's consent to marry the old widow. After expressing her surprise at a request so extraordinary- No, Sam, my willing consent you will never have to so preposterous a union. You are not twenty-five, and she is turned fifty. If she had any prudence, this request had never been made to me. Where are your means of subsistence? Porter has died poor, in consequence of his wife's expensive habits. You have great talents, but as yet have turned them into no profitable channel.'' Mother, I have not deceived Mrs. Porter; I have told her the worst of ine; that I am of mean extraction; that I have no money; and that I have had an uncle hanged.' She replied, that she valued no one more or less for his descent; that she had no more money than myself; and that, though she had not had a relation hanged, she had fifty who deserved hanging.""(Seward's Letters, vol. i, p. 45.) This account was given to Mr. Boswell, who, as Miss Seward could not have known it of her own knowledge, asked the lady for her authority. Miss Seward, in reply, quoted Mrs. Cobb, an old friend of Johnson's, who resided at Lichfield. To her, then, Boswell addressed himself; and, to his equal satisfaction and surprise, was answered that Mrs. Cobb had not only never told such a story, but that she had not even ever heard of it.-(Gent. Mag. vol. 63, p. 1009.) It is painful to have to add, that notwithstanding this denial, Miss Seward persisted in her story to the last. The report as to the hanging was probably derived from a coarse passage in the Rev. Donald M'Nicol's Remarks on Dr. Johnson's Journey to the Hebrides. "But whatever the Doctor may insinuate about the present scarcity of trees in Scotland, we are much deceived by fame if a very near ancestor of his, who was a native of that country, did not find to his cost that a tree was not quite such a rarity in his days." (P. 18. ed. 1779.) That some Scotchman, of the name of Johnston, may have been hanged in the seventeenth century, is very likely; but there seems no reason whatsoever to believe that any of Dr. Johnson's family were natives of Scotland.-ED.]

2 [The reader requested to observe, that Dr. Johnson used familiarly to designate Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi) as his "mistress."-Ep.]