so his mother took him in 1712, when he was only two and a half years old, to London, where he was touched by Queen Anne, being the last person so touched in England.  The belief had prevailed from the time of Edward the Confessor that scrofula could be cured by the royal touch, and although the office remained in our Prayer Book till 1719, the Jacobites considered that the power did not descend to King William and Queen Anne because “Divine” hereditary right was not fully possessed by them; which doubtless would be taken to account for the fact that Johnson was not healed, for he was troubled with the disease as long as he lived.  When he was three years old he was carried by his father to the cathedral to hear Dr. Sacheverell preach.  This gentleman, who was a Church of England minister and a great political preacher, was born in 1672.  He was so extremely bitter against the dissenters and their Whig supporters that he was impeached before the House of Lords, and suspended for three years, while his sermon on “Perils of False Brethren,” which had had an enormous sale, was burnt by the common hangman!  It was said that young Johnson’s conduct while listening to the doctor’s preaching on that occasion was quite exemplary.

[Illustration:  MONUMENT TO SAMUEL JOHNSON, LICHFIELD.]

Johnson was educated at the Lichfield Grammar School under Dr. Hunter, who was a very severe schoolmaster, and must have been one of those who “drove it in behind,” for Johnson afterwards wrote:  “My Master whipt me very well.  Without that I should have done nothing.”  Dr. Hunter boasted that he never taught a boy anything; he whipped and they learned.  It was said, too, that when he flogged them he always said:  “Boys, I do this to save you from the gallows!” Johnson went to Oxford, and afterwards, in 1736, opened a school near Lichfield, advertising in the Gentleman’s Magazine for young gentleman “to be boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by Samuel Johnson.”  He only got eight pupils, amongst whom was David Garrick, who afterwards became the leading tragic actor of his time.  Johnson had for some time been at work on a tragedy called The Tragedy of Irene, though whether this decided Garrick to become a tragedy actor is not known; the play, however, did not succeed with the play-going public in London, and had to be withdrawn.  Neither did the school succeed, and it had to be given up, Johnson, accompanied by David Garrick, setting off to London, where it was said that he lived in a garret on fourpence-halfpenny per day.  Many years afterwards, when Johnson was dining with a fashionable company, a remark was made referring to an incident that occurred in a certain year, and Johnson exclaimed:  “That was the year when I came to London with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket.”

Garrick overheard the remark, and exclaimed:  “Eh, what do you say? with twopence-halfpenny in your pocket?”

“Why, yes; when I came with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three-halfpence in thine.”