isfigured a countenance naturally harsh and rugged, beside doing
irreparable damage to the auricular organs, which never could perform
their functions since I knew him; and it was owing to that horrible
disorder, too, that one eye was perfectly useless to him; that defect,
however, was not observable, the eyes looked both alike. As Mr. Johnson
had an astonishing memory, I asked him if he could remember Queen Anne at
all? "He had," he said, "a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn,
recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood."

The christening of his brother he remembered with all its circumstances,
and said his mother taught him to spell and pronounce the words 'little
Natty,' syllable by syllable, making him say it over in the evening to
her husband and his guests. The trick which most parents play with their
children, that of showing off their newly-acquired accomplishments,
disgusted Mr. Johnson beyond expression. He had been treated so himself,
he said, till he absolutely loathed his father's caresses, because he
knew they were sure to precede some unpleasing display of his early
abilities; and he used, when neighbours came o' visiting, to run up a
tree that he might not be found and exhibited, such, as no doubt he was,
a prodigy of early understanding. His epitaph upon the duck he killed by
treading on it at five years old--

"Here lies poor duck
That Samuel Johnson trod on;
If it had liv'd it had been good luck,
For it would have been an odd one"--

is a striking example of early expansion of mind and knowledge of
language; yet he always seemed more mortified at the recollection of the
bustle his parents made with his wit than pleased with the thoughts of
possessing it. "That," said he to me one day, "is the great misery of
late marriages; the unhappy produce of them becomes the plaything of
dotage. An old man's child," continued he, "leads much such a life. I
think, as a little boy's dog, teased with awkward fondness, and forced,
perhaps, to sit up and beg, as we call it, to divert a company, who at
last go away complaining of their disagreeable entertainment." In
consequence of these maxims, and full of indignation against such parents
as delight to produce their young ones early into the talking world, I
have known Mr. Johnson give a good deal of pain by refusing to hear the
verses the children could recite, or the songs they could sing,
particularly one friend who t