ANECDOTES BY WILLIAM SEWARD, F.R.S.*
��OF music Dr. Johnson used to say that it was the only sensual pleasure without vice 2 . European Magazine, 1795, P- 82.
Dr. Johnson was extremely averse to the present foppish mode of educating children, so as to make them what foolish mothers call ' elegant young men.' He said to some lady who asked him what she should teach her son in early life, ' Madam, to read, to write, to count ; grammar, writing, and arithmetic ; three things which, if not taught in very early life, are seldom or ever taught to any purpose, and without the knowledge of which no superstructure of learning or of knowledge can be built 3 .' Ib. p. 1 86.
The Doctor used to say that he once knew a man of so vagabond a disposition, that he even wished, for the sake of change of place, to go to the West Indies. He set off on this expedition, and the Doctor saw him in town four months
1 These anecdotes are collected second definitions, as ' affecting the from the European Magazine, senses' or 'pleasing to the senses,' Seward's Anecdotes of Distinguished and not in the more limited sense Persons, and his Biographiana. which it now bears. For his feelings
Boswell owns his obligation to him towards music, see ante, ii. 103.
' for several communications.' Life, 3 ' I hate by-roads in education,
iii. 123. For an account of him, see Education is as well known, and has
ib. n. i ; and Letters, i. 346, n. i. long been as well known as ever it
2 Johnson here uses sensual in the can be.' Life, ii. 407.
sense that he gives it in his first and For arithmetic, see ante, i. 281, 295.
afterwards
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