married, and never had more than two children, both sons; Samuel, their first born, who lived to be the illustrious character whose various excellence 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, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, 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[1]. 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[2]' Michael was, however, forced by the narrowness of his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not only in his shop[3], but by occasionally resorting to several
- ↑ 'Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 3) records that Johnson told her that 'his father was wrong-headed, positive, and afflicted with melancholy.'
- ↑ Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd edit. p. 213 [Sept. 16]. Boswell.
- ↑ Stockdale in his Memoirs, ii. 102, records an anecdote told him
fragments of his Annals escaped the flames. One of these was never seen by Boswell; it was published in 1805 under the title of An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, from his Birth to his Eleventh Year, written by himself. In this he says (p. 14), 'My mother had no value for my father's relations; those indeed whom we knew of were much lower than hers.' Writing to Mrs. Thrale on his way to Scotland he said: 'We changed our horses at Darlington, where Mr. Cornelius Harrison, a cousin-german of mine, was perpetual curate. He was the only one of my relations who ever rose in fortune above penury, or in character above neglect.' Piozsi Letters, i. 105. His uncle Harrison he described as 'a very mean and vulgar man, drunk every night, but drunk with little drink, very peevish, very proud, very ostentatious, but luckily not rich.' Annals, p. 28. In Notes and Queries, 6th S. X. 465, is given the following extract of the marriage of Johnson's parents from the Register of Packwood in Warwickshire:—
'1706, Mickell Johnsones of lichfield and Sara ford maried June the 9th.'
