154 Anecdotes.
��(continued he) leads much such a life, I think, as a little boy's dog, teized with awkward fondness, and forced, perhaps, to sit up and beg, as we call it, to divert a company, who at last go away complaining of their disagreeable entertainment.' In consequence of these maxims, and full of indignation against such parents as delight to produce their young ones early into the talking world, I have known Mr. Johnson give a good deal of pain, by refusing to hear the verses the children could recite, or the songs they could sing ; particularly one friend who told him that his two sons should repeat Gray's Elegy to him alternately, that he might judge who had the happiest cadence. c No, pray Sir (said he), let the dears both speak it at once ; more noise will by that means be made, and the noise will be sooner over.' He told me the story himself, but I have forgot who the father was x .
Mr. Johnson's mother was daughter to a gentleman in the country, such as there were many of in those days, who possessing, perhaps, one or two hundred pounds a year in land, lived on the profits, and sought not to increase their income 2 : she was there fore inclined to think higher of herself than of her husband, whose conduct in money matters being but indifferent, she had a trick of teizing him about it, and was, by her son's account, very importunate with regard to her fears of spending more than they could afford, though she never arrived at knowing how much that was 3 ; a fault common, as he said, to most women who pride themselves on their ceconomy. They did not how ever, as I could understand, live ill together on the whole : * my father (says he) could always take his horse and ride away for orders when things went badly.' The lady's maiden name was Ford ; and the parson who sits next to the punch-bowl in Hogarth's Modern Midnight Conversation was her brother's son. This Ford was a man who chose to be eminent only for
1 Perhaps Bennet Langton, who, Life, i. 35. (Boswell's use of yeo- it was said, would make his son re- manry is incorrect ; he should have peat the Hebrew alphabet to a guest. said yeomen.} Johnson describes Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 260. her as ' Antiqua Fordorum gente
2 ' She was descended of an an- oriunda.' Ib. iv. 393, n. 2. cient race of substantial yeomanry.' 3 Ante, p. 133.
vice,
�� �
