I am fully aware of the objections which may be made to the minuteness
on some occasions of my detail of Johnson's conversation, and how
happily it is adapted for the petty exercise of ridicule, by men of
superficial understanding and ludicrous fancy; but I remain firm
and confident in my opinion, that minute particulars are frequently
characteristick, and always amusing, when they relate to a distinguished
man. I am therefore exceedingly unwilling that any thing, however
slight, which my illustrious friend thought it worth his while to
express, with any degree of point, should perish.

Of one thing I am certain, that considering how highly the small portion
which we have of the table-talk and other anecdotes of our celebrated
writers is valued, and how earnestly it is regretted that we have not
more, I am justified in preserving rather too many of Johnson's sayings,
than too few; especially as from the diversity of dispositions it cannot
be known with certainty beforehand, whether what may seem trifling to
some, and perhaps to the collector himself, may not be most agreeable to
many; and the greater number that an authour can please in any degree,
the more pleasure does there arise to a benevolent mind.

Samuel Johnson 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 stiled 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 obscure extraction, who settled in Lichfield as a bookseller and
stationer. His mother was Sarah Ford, descended of 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 to be the illustrious character
whose various excellence I am to endeavour to record, and Nathanael, who
died in his twenty-fifth year.

Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of a large and robust body, and of a
strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound
subs