84 Extracts from
��the great boy, which the father once overhearing, said, 'you call him the great boy, but take my word for it, he will one day prove a great man V
A more particular character of him while a schoolboy, and of his behaviour at school, I find in a paper now before me, written by a person yet living 2 , and of which the following is a copy :
' Johnson and I were, in early life, school-fellows at Lichfield, and for many years in the same class. As his uncommon abilities for learning far exceeded us, we endeavoured by every boyish piece of flattery to gain his assistance, and three of us, by turns, used to call on him in a morning, on one of whose backs, supported by the other two, he rode triumphantly to school. He never associated with us in any of our diversions, except in the winter when the ice was firm, to be drawn along by a boy barefooted. His ambition to excel was great, though his application to books, as far as it appeared, was very trifling. I could not oblige him more than by sauntering away every vacation, that occurred, in the fields, during which time he was more engaged in talking to himself than his companion. Verses or themes he would dictate to his favourites, but he would never be at the trouble of writing them. His dislike to business was so great, that he would procrastinate his exercises to the last
1 Percy, writing of Johnson at Stour- has now over men. That he seemed bridge School, says : * Here his to learn by intuition the contents of genius was so distinguished that, al- any book, that the boys submitted though little better than a school-boy, to him, and paid him great respect, he was admitted into the best com- . . . That he used to have oatmeal pany of the place, and had no common porridge for breakfast. That his attention paid to his conversation ; father was a very sensible man, and of which remarkable instances were very successful as a bookseller and long remembered there.' Anderson's stationer used to open a shop once Johnson, ed. 1815, p. 20. a week at Birmingham ; but was a
2 Edmund Hector. Life, i. 47. loser by a manufacture of parchment Boswell recorded in his note-book which he set up. That his mother
in March, 1776 : * Mr. Hector, was a very remarkable woman for
surgeon at Birmingham, who was good understanding. I asked him
at school with him, and used to buy if she was not vain of her son, Mr.
tarts with him of Dame Reid, told Hector said she had too much good
me that he had the same extra- sense to be vain, but she knew her
ordinary superiority over the boys of son's value.' Morrison Autographs >
the same age with himself that he 2nd Series, i. 368.
hour
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