LIFE OF SWIFT WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY F. RYLAND, M.A. AUTHOR OF "A STUDENT'S HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS," GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK ST., COVENT GARDEN AND NEW YORK 1894 INTRODUCTION. I. LIFE OF JOHNSON. AMUEL JOHNSON was born at Lichfield on Septem Saber 18th, 1709. ber 18th, 1709. His father, Michael Johnson, was a bookseller, who, at one time a well-to-do magistrate of the city, fell before his death into distressed circumstances. He was a high churchman and a Tory, with Jacobite leanings. The child's physical organization was undermined by scrofula, the king's evil as it was then called, which afterwards scarred and distorted his features and left him a prey to extreme mental depression and other symptoms of nervous disease. As he grew older he was afflicted with convulsive movements, and he lost the sight of one eye. About his fifth year he could not have been six-he was brought to London to be touched for the evil by Queen Anne. He was sent to Lichfield Grammar School, then under a very severe master, Mr. Hunter, one of the Cathedral clergy. He afterwards went to Stourbridge Grammar School (in Worcestershire), where he remained a year; but his school days were over at the age of sixteen. A couple of years at home were spent in desultory reading, "not voyages and travels" (he told Boswell), "but all literature, Sir, all ancient writers, all manly; though but little Greek so that when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams, now Master of |