BOOKS TO READ

Pope’s Iliad, edited by A. J. Church.  Pope’s Odyssey, edited by A. J. Church.

NOTE.—­As an introduction to Pope’s Homer the following books may be read:—­

Stories from the Iliad, by Jeanie Lang.  Stories from the Odyssey, by Jeannie Lang.  The Children’s Iliad, by A. J. Church.  The Children’s Odyssey, by A. J. Church.

Chapter LXVIII JOHNSON—­DAYS OF STRUGGLE

SAMUEL JOHNSON was the son of a country bookseller, and he was born at Lichfield in 1709.  He was a big, strong boy, but he suffered from a dreadful disease, known then as the King’s Evil.  It left scars upon his good-looking face, and nearly robbed him of his eyesight.  In those days people still believed that this dreadful disease would be cured if the person suffering from it was touched by a royal hand.  So when he was two, little Samuel was taken to London by his father and mother, and there he was “touched” by Queen Anne.  Samuel had a wonderful memory, and although he had been so young at the time, all his life after he kept a kind of awed remembrance of a stately lady who wore a long black hood and sparkling diamonds.  The touch of the Queen’s soft white hand did the poor little sick child no good, and it is quaint to remember that the great learned doctor thought it might be because he had been touched by the wrong royal hand.  He might have been cured perhaps had he been taken to Rome and touched by the hand of a Stuart.  For Johnson was a Tory, and all his life he remained at heart a Jacobite.

At school Samuel learned easily and read greedily all kinds of books.  He loved poetry most, and read Shakespeare when he was so young that he was frightened at finding himself alone while reading about the ghost in Hamlet.  Yet he was idle at his tasks and had not altogether an easy time, for when asked long years after how he became such a splendid Latin scholar, he replied, “My master whipt me very well, without that, sir, I should have done nothing.”

Samuel learned so easily that, though he was idle, he knew more than any of the other boys.  He ruled them too.  Three of them used to come every morning to carry their stout comrade to school.  Johnson mounted on the back of one, and the other two supported him, one on each side.  In winter when he was too lazy to skate or slide himself they pulled him about on the ice by a garter tied round his waist.  Thus early did Johnson show his power over his fellows.

At sixteen Samuel left school, and for two years idled about his father’s shop, reading everything that came in his way.  He devoured books.  He did not read them carefully, but quickly, tearing the heart out of them.  He cared for nothing else but reading, and once when his father was ill and unable to attend to his bookstall, he asked his son to do it for him.  Samuel refused.  But the memory of his disobedience and unkindliness stayed with him, and more than fifty years after, as an old and worn man, he stood bare-headed in the wind and rain for an hour in the market-place, upon the spot where his father’s stall had stood.  This he did as a penance for that one act of disobedience.