Rousseau--as like, I mean, as the sensations of frost and fire, when my
child complained yesterday that the ice she was eating BURNED her mouth."
Mr. Johnson 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 same
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 sound and perfect health. I have heard him relate
another odd thing of himself too, but it is one which everybody 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 suddenly
hurried upstairs to the street door that he might see people about him.
Such an incident, as he was not unwilling to relate it, is probably in
every one's possession now; he told it as a testimony to the merits of
Shakespeare. But one day, when my son was going to school, and dear Dr.
Johnson followed as far as the garden gate, praying for his salvation in a
voice which those who listened attentively could hear plain enough, he said
to me suddenly, "Make your boy tell you his dreams: the first corruption
that entered into my heart was communicated in a dream." "What was it,
sir?" said I. "Do not ask me," replied he, with much violence, and walked
away in apparent agitation. I never durst make any further inquiries. 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 son to the same
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 slipped my memory. Mr. Johnson was
himself exceedingly disposed to the general indulgence of children, and was