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BIRTHPLACE OF DR. JOHNSON, AT LICHFIELD.
In the large corner house, on the right of the Engraving, SAMUEL JOHNSON was born on the 18th of September, N.S. 1709. We learn from Boswell, that the house was built by Johnson's father, and that the two fronts, towards Market and Broad Market-street stood upon waste land of the Corporation of Lichfield, under a forty years lease; this expired in 1767, when on the 15th of August, "at a common hall of the bailiffs and citizens, it was ordered, (and that without any solicitation,) that a lease should be granted to Samuel Johnson, Doctor of Laws, of the incroachments at his house, for the term of ninety-nine years, at the old rent, which was five shillings. Of which, as town clerk, Mr. Simpson had the honour and pleasure of informing him, and that he was desired to accept it, without paying any fine on the occasion, which lease was afterwards granted, and the doctor died possessed of this property."
In the above house, the doctor's father Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, settled as a bookseller and stationer. He was diligent in business, and not only "kept shop" at home, but, on market days, frequented several towns in the neighbourhood, some of which were at a considerable distance from Lichfield. "At that time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of England were very rare, so that there was not one even in Birmingham, in which town old Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market-day. He was a pretty good Latin scholar, and a citizen so creditable as to be made one of the magistrates of Lichfield; and, being a man of good sense and skill in his trade, he acquired a reasonable share of wealth, of which, however, he afterwards lost the greatest part, by engaging unsuccessfully in the manufacture of parchment." This failure is attributed to the dishonesty of a servant; but it is observable in connexion with an incident in Dr. Johnson's literary history, which has not escaped the keen eye of Mr. Croker, the ingenious annotator of Boswell's Life of the great lexicographer.
Johnson's mother was a woman of distinguished understanding and piety; and to her must be ascribed those early impressions of religion upon the mind of her son, from which the world afterwards derived so much benefit. Johnson was the elder of two sons, the younger of whom died in his infancy.
Of Johnson's childhood at Lichfield it would not be difficult to assemble many interesting particulars: from his listening to Dr. Sacheverel, when he was but three years old; his being first taught to read English by Dame Oliver, a widow who kept a school for young children in Lichfield, and who gave him a present of gingerbread, and said he was the best scholar she ever had; to his arrival in London with the unfinished tragedy of Irene in his pocket, and the prospect of a slender engagement with Cave of the Gentleman's Magazine. One thing is certain, that however unpromising were Johnson's early days at Lichfield, he ever retained a warm affection for his native city, and which, by a sudden apostrophe, under the word Lich, he introduces with reverence into his immortal work, the ENGLISH DICTIONARY: Salve magna parens....