But there has been another story of his infant precocity generally circulated, and generally believed, the truth of which I am to refute upon his own authority.  It is told, that, when a child of three years old, he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the eleventh of a brood, and killed it; upon which, it is said, he dictated to his mother the following epitaph: 

’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.’

There is surely internal evidence that this little composition combines in it, what no child of three years old could produce, without an extension of its faculties by immediate inspiration; yet Mrs. Lucy Porter, Dr. Johnson’s stepdaughter, positively maintained to me, in his presence, that there could be no doubt of the truth of this anecdote, for she had heard it from his mother.  So difficult is it to obtain an authentick relation of facts, and such authority may there be for errour; for he assured me, that his father made the verses, and wished to pass them for his child’s.  He added, ’my father was a foolish old man; that is to say, foolish in talking of his children.’

Young Johnson had the misfortune to be much afflicted with the scrophula, or king’s evil, which disfigured a countenance naturally well formed, and hurt his visual nerves so much, that he did not see at all with one of his eyes, though its appearance was little different from that of the other.  There is amongst his prayers, one inscribed ’When, my eye was restored to its use,’ which ascertains a defect that many of his friends knew he had, though I never perceived it.  I supposed him to be only near-sighted; and indeed I must observe, that in no other respect could I discern any defect in his vision; on the contrary, the force of his attention and perceptive quickness made him see and distinguish all manner of objects, whether of nature or of art, with a nicety that is rarely to be found.  When he and I were travelling in the Highlands of Scotland, and I pointed out to him a mountain which I observed resembled a cone, he corrected my inaccuracy, by shewing me, that it was indeed pointed at the top, but that one side of it was larger than the other.  And the ladies with whom he was acquainted agree, that no man was more nicely and minutely critical in the elegance of female dress.  When I found that he saw the romantick beauties of Islam, in Derbyshire, much better than I did, I told him that he resembled an able performer upon a bad instrument.  It has been said, that he contracted this grievous malady from his nurse.  His mother yielding to the superstitious notion, which, it is wonderful to think, prevailed so long in this country, as to the virtue of the regal touch; a notion, which our kings encouraged, and to which a man of such inquiry and such judgement as Carte could give credit; carried him to London, where he was actually