ons--Samuel, their first
born, whose various excellences I am to endeavour to record, and
Nathaniel, who died in his twenty-fifth year.

Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of a large and robust body, and of a
strong and active mind; yet 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 the mind, "made him mad all his
life--at least, not sober." Old Mr. Johnson 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.

Young Johnson had the misfortune to be much afflicted 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. Yet, when he and I were travelling in the Highlands of Scotland,
and I pointed out to him a mountain, which, I observed, resembled a
cone, he corrected my inaccuracy by showing me that it was indeed
pointed at the top, but that one side of it was larger than the other.
And the ladies with whom he was acquainted agree that no man was more
nicely and minutely critical in the elegance of female dress.

He was first taught to read English by Dame Oliver, a widow, who kept a
school for young children in Lichfield. He began to learn Latin with Mr.
Hawkins, usher, or under-master, of Lichfield School. Then he rose to be
under the care of Mr. Hunter, the head-master, who, according to his
account "was very severe, and wrong-headedly severe. He used," said he,
"to beat us unmercifully, and he did not distinguish between ignorance
and negligence." Yet Johnson was very sensible how much he owed to Mr.
Hunter. Mr. Langton one day asked him how he had acquired so accurate a
knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of
his time. He said, "My master whipped me very well. Without that, si