He discovered a great ambition to excel, which roused him to counteract his indolence.  He was uncommonly inquisitive; and his memory was so tenacious, that he never forgot any thing that he either heard or read.  Mr. Hector remembers having recited to him eighteen verses, which, after a little pause, he repeated verbatim, varying only one epithet, by which he improved the line.

He never joined with the other boys in their ordinary diversions:  his only amusement was in winter, when he took a pleasure in being drawn upon the ice by a boy barefooted, who pulled him along by a garter fixed round him; no very easy operation, as his size was remarkably large.  His defective sight, indeed, prevented him from enjoying the common sports; and he once pleasantly remarked to me, ’how wonderfully well he had contrived to be idle without them.’  Mr. Hector relates, that ’he could not oblige him more than by sauntering away the hours of vacation in the fields, during which he was more engaged in talking to himself than to his companion.’

Dr. Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, who was long intimately acquainted with him, and has preserved a few anecdotes concerning him, regretting that he was not a more diligent collector, informs me, that ’when a boy he was immoderately fond of reading romances of chivalry, and he retained his fondness for them through life; so that (adds his Lordship) spending part of a summer at my parsonage house in the country, he chose for his regular reading the old Spanish romance of Felixmarte of Hircania, in folio, which he read quite through.  Yet I have heard him attribute to these extravagant fictions that unsettled turn of mind which prevented his ever fixing in any profession.’

1725:  AETAT. 16.—­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.  This step was taken by the advice of his cousin, the Reverend Mr. Ford, a man in whom both talents and good dispositions were disgraced by licentiousness, but who was a very able judge of what was right.  At this school he did not receive so much benefit as was expected.  It has been said, that he acted in the capacity of an assistant to Mr. Wentworth, in teaching the younger boys.  ’Mr. Wentworth (he told me) was a very able man, but an idle man, and to me very severe; but I cannot blame him much.  I was then a big boy; he saw I did not reverence him; and that he should get no honour by me.  I had brought enough with me, to carry me through; and all I should get at his school would be ascribed to my own labour, or to my former master.  Yet he taught me a great deal.’

He thus discriminated, to Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, his progress at his two grammar-schools.  ’At one, I learnt much in the school, but little from the master; in the other, I learnt much from the master, but little in the school.’