slight, which my illustrious friend thought it worth his while to express, with any degree of point, should perish. For this almost superstitious reverence, I have found very old and venerable authority, quoted by our great modern prelate, Secker, in whose tenth sermon there is the following passage:

"Rabbi David Kimchi, a noted Jewish commentator, who lived about five hundred years ago, explains that passage in the first psalm, 'His leaf also shall not wither,' from Rabbins yet older than himself, thus: That 'even the idle talk,' so he expresses it, 'of a good man ought to be regarded;' the most superfluous things, he saith, are always of some value. And other ancient authors have the same phrase, nearly in the same sense."

Of one thing I am certain, that considering how highly the small portion which we have of the table-talk, and other anecdotes, of our celebrated writers is valued, and how earnestly it is regretted that we have not more, I am justified in preserving rather too many of Johnson's sayings, than too few; especially as, from the diversity of dispositions, it cannot be known with certainty beforehand, whether what may seem trifling to some, and perhaps to the collector himself, may not be most agreeable to many; and the greater number that an author can please in any degree, the more pleasure does there arise to a benevolent mind.

To those who are weak enough to think this a degrading task, and the time and labour which have been devoted to it misemployed, I shall content myself with opposing the authority of the greatest man of any age, Julius Cæsar, of whom Bacon' observes, that "in his book of apophthegms which he collected, we see that he esteemed it more honour to make himself but a pair of tables, to take the wise and pithy words of others, than to have every word of his own to be made an apophthegm or an oracle."

Having said thus much by way of Introduction, I commit the following pages to the candour of the Public.

1 Advancement of Learning, Book I.

SAMUEL JOHNSON was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September, N.S., 1709; and his initiation into the Christian church was not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St. Mary's parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his birth:' His father is there styled Gentleman,' a circumstance of which an ignorant panegyrist has praised him for not being proud; when the truth is, that the appellation of Gentleman, though now lost in the indiscriminate assumption of Esquire, was commonly taken by those who could not boast of gentility. His father was Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, who settled in Lichfield as a bookseller and stationer. His mother was Sarah Ford,' descended of 1 Extract from Register of Baptisms in St. Mary's Church, Lichfield.

Sept. 1709

Bapd. Sam. Son of Mich. Johnson. gen1-7.

i. e. 18. New Stile.-Editor.

The title Gentleman had still, in 1709, some degree of its original meaning, and as Mr. Johnson served the office of sheriff of Lichfield in that year, he seems to have been in some measure entitled to it. At his entry on the books of Pembroke college, and at his matriculation, he designated himself as filius generosi.-Croker.

3 1657. Michaell the sonne of William Johnson and Catherine his wife was baptized April 20.

"Copied from the Register belonging to the Parish of Cubley in Derbyshire. This part of the Register is so much injured by time, that it is uncertain whether the date is April 20 or the 2nd. I think it is the 20th. Father's Register." Endorsement in Johnson's handwriting. Pocock MSS.

The following account of the Ford family, derived from the will of Dr. Joseph Ford, a physician, drawn up by Mr. Edward Ford, author of an excellent History of Enfield, has been obligingly communicated to me.

This determines some disputed points: 1. That, though Dr. Samuel