of
healing. The morbidness of constitution natural to him, and the defect
in his eye-sight, hindered him from partaking in the sports of other
children, and probably induced him to seek for distinction in
intellectual superiority. Dame Oliver, who kept a school for little
children, in Lichfield, first taught him to read; and, as he delighted
to tell, when he was going to the University, brought him a present of
gingerbread, in token of his being the best scholar her academy had ever
produced. His next instructor in his own language was a man whom he used
to call Tom Browne; and who, he said, published a Spelling Book, and
dedicated it to the universe. He was then placed with Mr. Hunter the
head master of the grammar school in his native city, but, for two years
before he came under his immediate tuition, was taught Latin by Mr.
Hawkins, the usher. It is just that one, who, in writing the lives of
men less eminent than himself, was always careful to record the names of
their instructors, should obtain a tribute of similar respect for his
own. By Mr. Price, who was afterwards head master of the same school,
and whose name I cannot mention without reverence and affection, I have
been told that Johnson, when late in life he visited the place of his
education, shewed him a nook in the school-room, where it was usual for
the boys to secrete the translations of the books they were reading;
and, at the same time, speaking of his old master, Hunter, said to him,
"He was not severe, Sir. A master ought to be severe. Sir, he was
cruel." Johnson, however, was always ready to acknowledge how much he
was indebted to Hunter for his classical proficiency. At the age of
fifteen, by the advice of his mother's nephew, Cornelius Ford, a
clergyman of considerable abilities, but disgraced by the licentiousness
of his life, and who is spoken of in the Life of Fenton, he was removed
to the grammar-school of Stourbridge, of which Mr. Wentworth was master.
Here he did not remain much more than a twelvemonth, and, as he told Dr.
Percy, learned much in the school, but little from the master; whereas,
with Hunter, he had learned much from the master, and little in the
school. The progress he made was, perhaps, gained in teaching the other
boys, for Wentworth is said to have employed him as an assistant. His
compositions in English verse indicate that command of language which he
afterwards attained. The two following years he accuses himself of
was