’I hate by-roads in education.  Education is as well known, and has long been as well known, as ever it can be.  Endeavouring to make children prematurely wise is useless labour.  Suppose they have more knowledge at five or six years old than other children, what use can be made of it?  It will be lost before it is wanted, and the waste of so much time and labour of the teacher can never be repaid.  Too much is expected from precocity, and too little performed.  Miss ——­ was an instance of early cultivation, but in what did it terminate?  In marrying a little Presbyterian parson, who keeps an infant boarding-school, so that all her employment now is,

“To suckle fools, and chronicle small-beer.”

She tells the children, “This is a cat, and that is a dog, with four legs and a tail; see there! you are much better than a cat or a dog, for you can speak.”  If I had bestowed such an education on a daughter, and had discovered that she thought of marrying such a fellow, I would have sent her to the Congress.’

’After having talked slightingly of musick, he was observed to listen very attentively while Miss Thrale played on the harpsichord, and with eagerness he called to her, “Why don’t you dash away like Burney?” Dr. Burney upon this said to him, “I believe, Sir, we shall make a musician of you at last.”  Johnson with candid complacency replied, “Sir, I shall be glad to have a new sense given to me."’

’He had come down one morning to the breakfast-room, and been a considerable time by himself before any body appeared.  When, on a subsequent day, he was twitted by Mrs. Thrale for being very late, which he generally was, he defended himself by alluding to the extraordinary morning, when he had been too early.  “Madame, I do not like to come down to vacuity."’

’Dr. Burney having remarked that Mr. Garrick was beginning to look old, he said, “Why, Sir, you are not to wonder at that; no man’s face has had more wear and tear."’

1776:  AETAT. 67.]—­Having arrived in London late on Friday, the 15th of March, I hastened next morning to wait on Dr. Johnson, at his house; but found he was removed from Johnson’s-court, No. 7, to Bolt-court, No. 8, still keeping to his favourite Fleet-street.  My reflection at the time upon this change as marked in my Journal, is as follows:  ’I felt a foolish regret that he had left a court which bore his name;* but it was not foolish to be affected with some tenderness of regard for a place in which I had seen him a great deal, from whence I had often issued a better and a happier man than when I went in, and which had often appeared to my imagination while I trod its pavements, in the solemn darkness of the night, to be sacred to wisdom and piety.’  Being informed that he was at Mr. Thrale’s, in the Borough, I hastened thither, and found Mrs. Thrale and him at breakfast.  I was kindly welcomed.  In a moment he was in a full glow of conversation, and I felt myself elevated as if brought into another