In such a strange case was imprisoned one of the most vigorous intellects of the time.  Vast strength hampered by clumsiness and associated with grievous disease, deep and massive powers of feeling limited by narrow though acute perceptions, were characteristic both of soul and body.  These peculiarities were manifested from his early infancy.  Miss Seward, a typical specimen of the provincial precieuse, attempted to trace them in an epitaph which he was said to have written at the age of three.

  Here lies good master duck
    Whom Samuel Johnson trod on;
  If it had lived, it had been good luck,
    For then we had had an odd one.

The verses, however, were really made by his father, who passed them off as the child’s, and illustrate nothing but the paternal vanity.  In fact the boy was regarded as something of an infant prodigy.  His great powers of memory, characteristic of a mind singularly retentive of all impressions, were early developed.  He seemed to learn by intuition.  Indolence, as in his after life, alternated with brief efforts of strenuous exertion.  His want of sight prevented him from sharing in the ordinary childish sports; and one of his great pleasures was in reading old romances—­a taste which he retained through life.  Boys of this temperament are generally despised by their fellows; but Johnson seems to have had the power of enforcing the respect of his companions.  Three of the lads used to come for him in the morning and carry him in triumph to school, seated upon the shoulders of one and supported on each side by his companions.

After learning to read at a dame-school, and from a certain Tom Brown, of whom it is only recorded that he published a spelling-book and dedicated it to the Universe, young Samuel was sent to the Lichfield Grammar School, and was afterwards, for a short time, apparently in the character of pupil-teacher, at the school of Stourbridge, in Worcestershire.  A good deal of Latin was “whipped into him,” and though he complained of the excessive severity of two of his teachers, he was always a believer in the virtues of the rod.  A child, he said, who is flogged, “gets his task, and there’s an end on’t; whereas by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundations of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other.”  In practice, indeed, this stern disciplinarian seems to have been specially indulgent to children.  The memory of his own sorrows made him value their happiness, and he rejoiced greatly when he at last persuaded a schoolmaster to remit the old-fashioned holiday-task.