But there has been another story of his infant precocity generally
circulated, and generally believed, the truth of which I am to refute
upon his own authority. It is told, that, when a child of three years
old, he chanced to tread upon a duckling, the eleventh of a brood,
and killed it; upon which, it is said, he dictated to his mother the
following epitaph:

'Here lies good master duck,
Whom Samuel Johnson trod on;
If it had liv'd, it had been GOOD LUCK,
For then we'd had an ODD ONE.'

There is surely internal evidence that this little composition combines
in it, what no child of three years old could produce, without an
extension of its faculties by immediate inspiration; yet Mrs. Lucy
Porter, Dr. Johnson's stepdaughter, positively maintained to me, in his
presence, that there could be no doubt of the truth of this anecdote,
for she had heard it from his mother. So difficult is it to obtain
an authentick relation of facts, and such authority may there be for
errour; for he assured me, that his father made the verses, and wished
to pass them for his child's. He added, 'my father was a foolish old
man; that is to say, foolish in talking of his children.'

Young Johnson had the misfortune to be much afflicted with the
scrophula, or king's evil, which disfigured a countenance naturally well
formed, and hurt his visual nerves so much, that he did not see at all
with one of his eyes, though its appearance was little different from
that of the other. There is amongst his prayers, one inscribed 'When, my
EYE was restored to its use,' which ascertains a defect that many of his
friends knew he had, though I never perceived it. I supposed him to be