JOHNSON. 5 



the father's business, and died at the age of five-and- 

 twenty. The family were of strong high church prin- 

 ciples, and continued through all fortunes attached to the 

 House of Stuart. 



Johnson at a very early age shewed abilities far above 

 those of his comrades. His quickness of apprehension 

 made learning exceedingly easy to him, and he had an 

 extraordinary power of memory, which stood by him 

 through life. His school companions well remembered 

 in after life his great superiority over them all ; they 

 would relate how when only six or seven years old, he 

 used to help them in their tasks as well as to amuse them 

 by his jokes, and his narratives, and how they were wont 

 to carry him of a morning to school, attending him in a 

 kind of triumph. The seminary in which he was edu- 

 cated for several years after, was Mr. Hunter's, and 

 although he always considered the severity of that 

 teacher as excessive, he yet candidly admitted that but 

 for the strict discipline maintained, he should never have 

 learnt much ; for his nature was extremely indolent 

 owing to his feeble spirits and broken health, and his 

 habits of application were then, as ever after, very de- 

 sultory and irregular. The school was, moreover, famous 

 for a succession of ushers and schoolmasters hardly 

 equalled in any other ; six or seven who attained emi- 

 nence in after life, all about the time of Johnson, having 

 either taught or learnt under Mr. Hunter. 



In his fifteenth year he went to Mr. Westworth's 

 school at Stourbridge by the advice of his maternal cousin, 

 Mr. Ford, a clergyman represented as of better capacity 

 than life ; and after a year passed there to no good pur- 

 pose, he returned to Lichfield, where he whiled away his 



