FROM a newly issued Life of Johnson illustrated, we have taken a view of the great lexicographer's birth-place, and of Edial House where he first undertook his office of teacher. We subjoin Boswell's account of the courtship of the doctor, with some notice of his mother's family:- Porter told me that when he was first introduced to her mother his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye, and the scars of the scrofula were deeply visible. He also wore his hair, which was straight and stiff, and separated behind; and he often had seemingly convulsive starts and odd gesticulations, which tended to excite at once surprise and ridicule. Mrs. Porter was so much "His juvenile attachments to the fair sex engaged by his conversation that she overwere very transient. * looked all these external disadvantages, and said to her daughter, 'This is the most sensible man that I ever saw in my life.' * * * "In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally concentrated in one object. This was experienced by Johnson when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband's death. VOL. II.-1 "Though Mrs. Porter was double the age of Johnson, and her person and manner, as described to me by the late Mr. Garrick, were by no means pleasing to others, she must have had a superiority of understandMissing and talents, as she certainly inspired him with a more than ordinary passion; and she having signified her willingness to accept of his hand, he went to Lichfield to ask his mother's consent to the marriage, which he could not but be conscious was a very imprudent scheme, both on account of their disparity of years and her want of fortune. But Mrs. Johnson knew too well the ardor of her son's temper, and was too tender a parent to oppose his inclinations. "I know not for what reason the marriage ceremony was not performed at Birmingham; but a resolution was taken that it should be at Derby, for which place the bride and bridegroom set out on horseback, I suppose in very good humor. But, though Mr. Topham Beauclerk used archly to mention Johnson's having told him with much gravity, Sir, it was a love marriage on both sides,' I have had from my illustrious friend the following curious account of their journey to church upon the nuptial morn [9th July]: Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, sir, at the first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I, therefore, pushed on briskly, till I was out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be in tears.' "This, it must be allowed, was a singular beginning of connubial felicity; but there is no doubt that Johnson, though he thus showed a manly firmness, proved a most affectionate and indulgent husband to the last moment of Mrs. Johnson's life; and in his Prayers and Meditations' we find very remarkable evidence that his regard and fondness for her never ceased, even after her death." Boswell says of the birth of this renowned writer that he "Was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September, N. s., 1709, and his initiation into the Christian Church was not delayed, for his baptism is recorded in the register of St. Mary's parish in that city to have been performed on the day of his birth; his father is there styled gentleman, a circumstance of which an ignorant panegyrist has praised him for not being proud; when the truth is, that the appellation of gentleman, though now lost in the indiscriminate assumption of esquire, was commonly taken by those who could not boast of gentility. His father was Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of the same extraction, who settled in Lichfield as a bookseller and stationer. His mother was Sarah Ford, descended from an ancient race of substantial yeomanry in Warwickshire. They were well advanced in years when they married, and never had more than two children, both sons-Samuel, their first born, who lived tobe such an illustrious character; and Nathaniel, who died in his twenty-fifth year.. She was a woman of distinguished understanding, which, however, was not much cultivated, as we may gather from Dr. Johnson's own account of his early years. My father and mother,' says Johnson, 'had not much happiness from each other. They seldom conversed; for my father could not bear to talk of his affairs; and my mother, being unacquainted with books, cared not to talk of any thing else. Had my mother been more literate, they had been better companions.' "There is a circumstance in the life of his father somewhat romantic, but so well authenticated as to deserve mention. A young woman of Leek, in Staffordshire, while he served his apprenticeship there, conceived a violent passion for him; and, though it met with no favorable return, followed him to Lichfield, where she took lodgings opposite to the house in which he lived, and indulged her hopeless flame. When he was informed that it so preyed upon her mind that her life was in danger, he with a generous humanity went to her, and offered to marry her, but it was then too late, her vital power was exhausted; and she thus painfully illustrated that a woman can die for love. "Of the power of Dr. Johnson's memory, for which he was all his life eminent to a degree almost incredible, the following early instance is recorded as told in his presence at Sheffield, in 1770, by his stepdaughter, Mrs. Lucy Porter, and related to her by his mother:-When he was a child in petticoats, and learned to read, Mrs. Johnson |