Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/149

 Annals.

��issue was cut in my left arm J ; of which I took no great notice, as I think my mother has told me, having my little hand in a custard.

It is observable, that, having been told of this operation, I always imagined that I remembered it, but I laid the scene in the wrong house. Such confusions of memory I suspect to be common.

My mother visited me every day, and used to go different ways, that her assiduity might not expose her to ridicule 2 ; and often left her fan or glove behind her, that she might have a pretence to come back unexpected ; but she never discovered any token of neglect. Dr. Swinfen 3 told me, that the scrofulous sores which afflicted me proceeded from the bad humours of the nurse, whose son had the same distemper, and was likewise short-sighted, but both in a less degree. My mother thought my diseases derived from her family.

In ten weeks I was taken home, a poor, diseased infant, almost blind.

I remember my aunt Nath. Ford 4 told me, when I was about . . . years old, that she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street.

In ... 67, when I was at Lichfield 5, I went to look for my

��1 How long this issue was con tinued I do not remember. I believe it was suffered to dry when I was about six years old. Note by Johnson.

2 A curious instance of the bruta lity of the age.

3 His godfather. Life, i. 34, n. 2.

4 Ib. i. 49, n. 3.

5 Benjamin West, in a curiously- spelt letter to a friend in Philadelphia, dated July 20, 1798, speaking of his recollections of that town, says : impressions on our minds, and I am prosuaded were I to revisit those abodes, I should feel a greater joy than those felt by Dr. Johnson (that great luminary in the lettered world) whom I heard say at his Club, when
 * Early habits my friend make lasting

��a friend asked the Dr. then just returned from visiting the place of his Nativity after a space of 40 years absence, what gave him the greatest delight when there? Why Sir re- plyed the Dr. it was to jump over that Style when 70 years of age, which I had been accustom to jump over when I was a Boy going to the day school. From my feelings at the recollection of my juvinal foot steps I am prosuaded the Dr. spoke the dictates of his heart.' Pennsyl vania Magazine ', July 1894, p. 221.

Johnson's first visit to Lichfield (not counting one of five days in the winter of 1761-2) was in 1767, thirty years after his removal to London. Life, iii. 452 ; Letters, i. 128-130. 2, nurse's

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