earl of Chesterfield, he wished to attend
that nobleman on his embassy to the Hague. Colley Cibber has recorded
the anecdote. "You should go," said the witty peer, "if to your many
vices you would add one more." "Pray, my lord, what is that?"
"Hypocrisy, my dear doctor." Johnson had a younger brother named
Nathaniel, who died at the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Michael
Johnson, the father, was chosen, in the year 1718, under bailiff of
Lichfield; and, in the year 1725, he served the office of the senior
bailiff. He had a brother of the name of Andrew, who, for some years,
kept the ring at Smithfield, appropriated to wrestlers and boxers. Our
author used to say, that he was never thrown or conquered. Michael, the
father, died December 1731, at the age of seventy-six: his mother at
eighty-nine, of a gradual decay, in the year 1759. Of the family nothing
more can be related worthy of notice. Johnson did not delight in talking
of his relations. "There is little pleasure," he said to Mrs. Piozzi,
"in relating the anecdotes of beggary."

Johnson derived from his parents, or from an unwholesome nurse, the
distemper called the king's evil. The Jacobites at that time believed in
the efficacy of the royal touch, and, accordingly, Mrs. Johnson
presented her son, when two years old, before queen Anne, who, for the
first time, performed that office, and communicated to her young patient
all the healing virtue in her power[c]. He was afterwards cut for that
scrophulous humour, and the under part of his face was seamed and
disfigured by the operation. It is supposed, that this disease deprived
him of the sight of his left eye, and also impaired his hearing. At
eight years old, he was placed under Mr. Hawkins, at the free school in
Lichfield, where he was not remarkable for diligence or regular
application. Whatever he read, his tenacious memory made his own. In the
fields, with his schoolfellows, he talked more to himself than with his
companions. In 1725, when he was about sixteen years old, he went on a
visit to his cousin Cornelius Ford, who detained him for some months,
and, in the mean time, assisted him in the classics. The general
direction for his studies, which he then received, he related to Mrs.
Piozzi. "Obtain," says Ford, "some general principles of every science:
he who can talk only on one subject, or act only in one department, is
seldom wanted, and, perhaps, never wished for; while the man of general
knowledg