Anecdotes of Johnson | Page 7

not observable, the eyes looked both alike. As Mr.
Johnson had an astonishing memory, I asked him if he could remember
Queen Anne at all? "He had," he said, "a confused, but somehow a sort
of solemn, recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood."
The christening of his brother he remembered with all its circumstances,
and said his mother taught him to spell and pronounce the words 'little
Natty,' syllable by syllable, making him say it over in the evening to
her husband and his guests. The trick which most parents play with
their children, that of showing off their newly-acquired

accomplishments, disgusted Mr. Johnson beyond expression. He had
been treated so himself, he said, till he absolutely loathed his father's
caresses, because he knew they were sure to precede some unpleasing
display of his early abilities; and he used, when neighbours came o'
visiting, to run up a tree that he might not be found and exhibited, such,
as no doubt he was, a prodigy of early understanding. His epitaph upon
the duck he killed by treading on it at five years old--
"Here lies poor duck That Samuel Johnson trod on; If it had liv'd it had
been good luck, For it would have been an odd one"--
is a striking example of early expansion of mind and knowledge of
language; yet he always seemed more mortified at the recollection of
the bustle his parents made with his wit than pleased with the thoughts
of possessing it. "That," said he to me one day, "is the great misery of
late marriages; the unhappy produce of them becomes the plaything of
dotage. An old man's child," continued he, "leads much such a life. I
think, as a little boy's dog, teased with awkward fondness, and forced,
perhaps, to sit up and beg, as we call it, to divert a company, who at last
go away complaining of their disagreeable entertainment." In
consequence of these maxims, and full of indignation against such
parents as delight to produce their young ones early into the talking
world, I have known Mr. Johnson give a good deal of pain by refusing
to hear the verses the children could recite, or the songs they could sing,
particularly one friend who told him that his two sons should repeat
Gray's "Elegy" to him alternately, that he might judge who had the
happiest cadence. "No, pray, sir," said he, "let the dears both speak it at
once; more noise will by that means be made, and the noise will be
sooner over." He told me the story himself, but I have forgot who the
father was.
Mr. Johnson's mother was daughter to a gentleman in the country, such
as there were many of in those days, who possessing, perhaps, one or
two hundred pounds a year in land, lived on the profits, and sought not
to increase their income. She was, therefore, inclined to think higher of
herself than of her husband, whose conduct in money matters being but
indifferent, she had a trick of teasing him about it, and was, by her son's
account, very importunate with regard to her fears of spending more
than they could afford, though she never arrived at knowing how much
that was, a fault common, as he said, to most women who pride

themselves on their economy. They did not, however, as I could
understand, live ill together on the whole. "My father," says he, "could
always take his horse and ride away for orders when things went
badly." The lady's maiden name was Ford; and the parson who sits next
to the punch-bowl in Hogarth's "Modern Midnight Conversation" was
her brother's son. This Ford was a man who chose to be eminent only
for vice, with talents that might have made him conspicuous in
literature, and respectable in any profession he could have chosen. His
cousin has mentioned him in the lives of Fenton and of Broome; and
when he spoke of him to me it was always with tenderness, praising his
acquaintance with life and manners, and recollecting one piece of
advice that no man surely ever followed more exactly: "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 knowledge can
often benefit, and always please." He used to relate, however, another
story less to the credit of his cousin's penetration, how Ford on some
occasion said to him, "You will make your way the more easily in the
world, I see, as you are contented to dispute no man's claim to
conversation excellence; they will, therefore, more willingly allow your
pretensions as a writer." Can one, on