offered (of course) he seized the book with avidity; but on examination, not finding himself scholar enough to peruse its contents, set his heart at rest; and, not thinking to enquire whether there were any English books written on the subject, followed his usual amusements, and confidered his confcience as lightened of a crime. He redoubled his diligence to learn the language that contained the information he most wished for; but from the pain which guilt had given him, he now began to deduce the foul's immortality, which was the point that belief first stopped at; and from that moment resolving to be a Christian, became one of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever produced. When he had told me this odd anecdote of his childhood; " I cannot imagine (faid he), what makes me talk of myself to you fo, for I really never mentioned this foolish story to any body except Dr. Taylor, not even to my dear dear Bathurst, whom I loved better than ever I loved any human creature; but poor Bathurst is dead!!!" - Here a long pause and a few tears ensued. Why Sir, faid I, how like is all this to Jean Jaques Rousseau! as like, I mean, as the fensations of froft and fire, when my child complained yesterday that the ice she was eating burned her mouth. Mr. Johnfon laughed at the incongruous ideas; but the first thing which presented itself to the mind of an ingenious and learned friend whom I had the pleasure to pass some time with here at Florence, was the fame resemblance, though I think the two characters had little in common, further than an early attention to things beyond the capacity of other babies, a keen sensibility of right and wrong, and a warmth of imagination little consistent with found and perfect health. I have heard him relate another odd thing of himself too, but it is one which every body has heard as well as me: how,

when he was about nine years old, having got the play of Hamlet in his hand, and reading it quietly in his father's kitchen, he kept on steadily enough, till coming to the Ghost scene, he fuddenly hurried up ftairs to the street door that he might fee people about him: such an incident, as he was not unwilling to relate it, is probably in every one's pofsession now; he told it as a teftimony to the merits of Shakespeare: but one day when my fon was going to school, and dear Dr. Johnson followed as far as the garden gate, praying for his falvation, in a voice which those who listened attentively, could hear plain enough, he faid to me fuddenly, "Make your boy tell you his dreams: the first corruption that entered into my heart was communicated in a dream." What was it, Sir? faid I. "Do not ask me," replied he with much violence, and walked away in apparent agitation. I never durst make any further enquiries. He retained a strong aversion for the memory of Hunter, one of his schoolmasters, who, he said, once was a brutal fellow : " so brutal (added he), that no man who had been educated by him ever sent his fon to the fame school." I have however heard him acknowledge his scholarship to be very great. His next master he despised, as knowing less than himself, I found; but the name of that gentleman has flipped my memory. Mr. Johnson was himself exceedingly disposed to the general indulgence of children, and was even scrupulously and ceremoniously attentive not to offend them: he had strongly perfuaded himself of the difficulty people always find to erase early impressions either of kindness or resentment, and faid, "he should never have so loved his mother when a man, had she not given him coffee she could ill afford, to gratify his appetite when a boy." If you had had children Sir, faid I, would you have taught them any thing? "I hope (re

plied he), that I should have willingly lived on bread and water to obtain instruction for them; but I would not have fet their future friendship to hazard for the fake of thrusting into their heads knowledge of things for which they might not perhaps have either taste or necefsity. You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder when you have done that they do not delight in your company. No science can be communicated by mortal creatures without attention from the scholar; no attention can be obtained from children without the infiction of pain, and pain is never remembered without resentment." That fomething should be learned, was, however, so certainly his opinion, that I have heard him say, how education had been often compared to agriculture, yet that it resembled it chiefly in this : " that if nothing is sown, no crop (says he) can be obtained." His contempt of the lady who fancied her fon could be emi