tempted to trace them in an epitaph which he was said to have written
at the age of three.

Here lies good master duck
Whom Samuel Johnson trod on;
If it had lived, it had been good luck,
For then we had had an odd one.

The verses, however, were really made by his father, who passed them off
as the child's, and illustrate nothing but the paternal vanity. In fact
the boy was regarded as something of an infant prodigy. His great powers
of memory, characteristic of a mind singularly retentive of all
impressions, were early developed. He seemed to learn by intuition.
Indolence, as in his after life, alternated with brief efforts of
strenuous exertion. His want of sight prevented him from sharing in the
ordinary childish sports; and one of his great pleasures was in reading
old romances--a taste which he retained through life. Boys of this
temperament are generally despised by their fellows; but Johnson seems
to have had the power of enforcing the respect of his companions. Three
of the lads used to come for him in the morning and carry him in triumph
to school, seated upon the shoulders of one and supported on each side
by his companions.

After learning to read at a dame-school, and from a certain Tom Brown,
of whom it is only recorded that he published a spelling-book and
dedicated it to the Universe, young Samuel was sent to the Lichfield
Grammar School, and was afterwards, for a short time, apparently in the
character of pupil-teacher, at the school of Stourbridge, in
Worcestershire. A good deal of Latin was "whipped into him," and though
he complained of the excessive severity of two of his teachers, he was
always a believer in the virtues of the rod. A child, he said, who is
flogged, "gets his task, and there's an end on't; whereas by exciting
emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundations of
lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other." In
practice, indeed, this stern disciplinarian seems to have been specially
indulgent to children. The memory of his own sorrows made him value
their happiness, and he rejoiced greatly when he at last persuaded a
schoolmaster to remit the old-fashioned holiday-task.

Johnson left school at sixteen and spent two years at home, probably in
learning his father's business. This seems to have been the chief period
of his studies. Long afterwards he said that he knew almost as much at
eighteen as he did at the age of fifty-three--the