was actually touched by Queen Anne. Mrs. Johnson indeed, as Mr. Hector informed me, acted by the advice of the celebrated Sir John Floyer[1], then a physician in Lichfield. Johnson used to talk of this very frankly; and Mrs. Piozzi has preserved his very picturesque description of the scene, as it remained upon his fancy. Being asked if he could remember Queen Anne, 'He had (he said) a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood[2].' This touch, however, was without any effect. I ventured to say to him, in allusion to the political principles in which he was educated, and of which he ever retained some odour, that 'his mother had not carried him far enough; she should have taken him to Rome.'
He was first taught to read English by Dame Oliver[3], a widow, who kept a school for young children in Lichfield. He told me she could read the black letter, and asked him to borrow for her, from his father, a bible in that character. When he was going to Oxford, she came to take leave of him, brought him, in the simplicity of her kindness, a present of gingerbread, and said, he was the best scholar she ever had. He delighted in mentioning this early compliment: adding, with a smile, that 'this was as high a proof of his merit as he could conceive.' His next instructor in English was a master, whom, when he spoke of him to me, he familiarly called Tom Brown, who, said he, 'published a spelling-book, and dedicated it to the Universe; but, I fear, no copy of it can now be had[4].'
- ↑ See. Post, p. 106, note.
- ↑ Anecdotes, p. 10. Boswell.
- ↑ Johnson, writing of Addison's schoolmasters, says:—'Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously diminished. I would therefore trace him through the whole process of his education.'Johnson's Works, vii 418.
- ↑ Neither the British Museum nor the Bodleian Library has a copy.
'Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred thousand persons. . . . The expense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year.' Macaulay's England, ch. xiv.
