hardly tell who was my grandfather." His mother was Sarah
Ford, who came of a good yeoman stock in Warwickshire. She was both a
good and an intelligent woman. Samuel was the elder and only
ultimately surviving issue of the marriage. A picturesque incident in
his childhood is that his mother took him to London to be "touched" by
Queen Anne for the scrofula, or "king's evil," as it was called, from
which he suffered. He must have been one of the last persons to go
through this curious {88} ceremony, which the Georges never performed,
though the service for it remained in the Book of Common Prayer for
some years after the accession of George I. The boy made an impression
upon people from the first. He liked to recall in later life that the
dame who first taught him to read brought him a present of gingerbread
when he was starting for Oxford, and told him he was the best scholar
she had ever had. Afterwards he went to Lichfield School, and at the
age of fifteen to Stourbridge. At both he was evidently held in
respect by boys and masters alike. Probably the curious combination in
him of the invalid and the prize-fighter which was conspicuous all
through his life, already arrested attention in his boyhood. He played
none of the ordinary games, but yet, as we have already seen, was
acknowledged as a leader by the boys, and his abilities were the pride
of the school. He already exhibited the amazing memory which enabled
him in later life to dictate to Boswell his famous letter to
Chesterfield rather than search for a copy, and to confute a person who
praised a bad translation from Martial by a contemptuous "Why, sir, the
original is thus," followed by a recitation not only of the Latin
original which it is not likely he had looked at for years, but also of
the translation which he had only read {89} once. So on another
occasion when Baretti, who had read a little Ariosto with him some
years before, proposed to give him some more lessons, but feared he
might have forgotten their previous readings, "Who forgets, sir?" said
Johnson, and immediately repeated three or four stanzas of the
_Orlando_. To the lover of literature there is no possession more
precious than a good verbal memory, and this Johnson enjoyed to a very
unusual degree all through his life. But it is worth noting that he
was entirely free from the defect which commonly results from an
exceptional memory. He always thought and spoke for himself, and w