Page:The Poetical Works of Samuel Johnson.pdf/5

4 of Sir John Hawkins and Mr. Boswell being more elaborately composed, claim a pre-eminence over the rest, and entitle their authors to the appellation of his biographers; while the accounts of the others being compressed by abridgment, are more properly denominated 'Biographical Sketches,' 'Anecdote ,' and ' Essays.'The major part of the facts related in the present account, have therefore of course been taken from the narratives of the before mentioned biographers, with the addition of such particulars, as other narratives have been found to supply.

Samuel Johnson was the eldest son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller at Litchfield, in which city this great man was born, on the 7th of September 1709. His mother, Sarah Ford, was the sister of Dr. Joseph Ford, an eminent physician, and father of Cornelius Ford, chaplain to Lord Chesterfield, supposed to be the parson in Hogarth's 'Modern Midnight Conversation,a man of great parts, but profligate manners.Mrs. Ford was a woman of distinguished understanding, prudence and piety.

As something extraordinary is often related of the infant state of a great genius, we are told by Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins, that at the age of three years Johnson trod by accident upon one of a brood of eleven ducks, and killed it, and upon that occasion made the following verses. Here lies good master duck,
 * Whom Samuel Johnson trod on.

If it had liv'd, it had been good luck,
 * For then we'd had an odd one,