Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson, with a Selection from his Essay on Johnson

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
From a photograph of the painting by John Opie, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery
WITH A SELECTION FROM HIS ESSAY ON JOHNSON
Edited With an Introduction and Notes BY CHARLES LANE HANSON
Instructor in English, Mechanic Arts High School, Boston Editor of Carlyle's Essay on Burns, Representative Poems of Burns, Etc.
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Copyright, 1903, by CHARLES LANE HANSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 421·12
The Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A.
The editor explains the difference between Macaulay's Life of Johnson and Macaulay's Essay on Johnson in the Introduction, IV, p. xxviii, and gives his reason for printing only a portion of the Essay .


As these incidents indicate, the youngster was precocious. When he was seven, his mother writes, he wrote a compendium of universal history, and really contrived to give a tolerably connected view of the leading events from the Creation to the present time, filling about a quire of paper. Yet, fond as he was of reading, he was as playful as a kitten. Although he made wonderful progress in all branches of his education, he had to be driven to school. Again and again his entreaty to be allowed to stay at home met his mother's No, Tom, if it rains cats and dogs, you shall go. The boy thought he was too busy with his literary activities to waste time in school; but the father and mother looked upon his productions merely as schoolboy amusements. He was to be treated like other boys, and no suspicion was to come to him, if they could help it, that he was superior to other children.