Name: Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson, with a Selection from his Essay on Johnson
Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay
ISBN: 978-1298072443

Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson, with a Selection from his Essay on Johnson

By Thomas Babington Macaulay 8 Jan, 2020

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Before Thomas Babington Macaulay was big enough to hold a large volume he used to lie on the rug by the open fire, with his book on the floor and a piece of bread and butter in his hand. Apparently the three-year-old boy was as fond of reading as of eating, and even at this time he showed that he was no mere bookworm by sharing with the maid what he had learned from "a volume as big as himself." He never tired of telling the stories that he read, and as he easily remembered the words of the book he rapidly acquired a somewhat astonishing vocabulary for a boy of his years. One afternoon when the little fellow, then aged four, was visiting, a servant spilled some hot coffee on his legs. The hostess, who was very sympathetic, soon afterward asked how he was feeling. He looked up in her face and replied, "Thank you, madam, the agony is abated." It was at this same period of his infancy that he had a little plot of ground of his own, marked out by a row of oyster shells, which a maid one day threw away as rubbish. "He went straight to the drawing-room, where his mother was entertaining some visitors, walked into the circle, and said, very solemnly, 'Cursed be Sally; for it is written, Cursed is he that removeth his neighbor's landmark.'"1 Less

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