He was first taught to read English by Dame Oliver, a widow, who kept a school for young children in Lichfield.  He began to learn Latin with Mr. Hawkins, usher, or under-master, of Lichfield School.  Then he rose to be under the care of Mr. Hunter, the head-master, who, according to his account “was very severe, and wrong-headedly severe.  He used,” said he, “to beat us unmercifully, and he did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence.”  Yet Johnson was very sensible how much he owed to Mr. Hunter.  Mr. Langton one day asked him how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time.  He said, “My master whipped me very well.  Without that, sir, I should have done nothing.”  Indeed, upon all occasions, he expressed his approbation of enforcing instruction by means of the rod.  “The rod,” said he, “produces an effect which terminates in itself.  A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there’s an end on’t; whereas, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief.”

From his earliest years Johnson’s superiority was perceived and acknowledged.  He was from the beginning a king of men.  His schoolfellow, Mr. Hector, has assured me that he never knew him corrected at school but for talking and diverting other boys from their business.  He seemed to learn by intuition; for though indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution, whenever he made an exertion he did more than anyone else.  He was uncommonly inquisitive; and his memory was so tenacious that he never forgot anything that he either heard or read.  Mr. Hector remembers having recited to him eighteen verses, which, after a little pause, he repeated verbatim.

He never joined with the other boys in their ordinary diversions, for his defective sight prevented him from enjoying them; and he once pleasantly remarked to me “how wonderfully well he had contrived to be idle without them.”  Of this inertness of disposition Johnson had all his life too great a share.

After having resided for some time at the house of his uncle, Cornelius Ford, Johnson was, at the age of fifteen, removed to the school of Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, of which Mr. Wentworth was then master.  At this school he did not receive so much benefit as was expected, and remaining there little more than a year, returned home, where he may be said to have loitered for two years.  He had no settled plan of life, and though he read a great deal in a desultory manner, he read only as chance and inclination directed him.  “What I read,” he told me, “were not voyages and travels, but all literature, sir, all ancient writers, all manly; though but little Greek, only some of Anacreon and Hesiod.  But in this irregular manner I had looked into many books which were not known at the universities, where they seldom read any books but what are put into their hands by their tutors; so that when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams, now Master of Pembroke College, told me I was the best qualified for the university that he had ever known come there.”