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Actor and dramatist, b. at Hereford, but got most of his education at Lichfield, to which his f. belonged. He was also one of the three pupils who attended Johnson's School at Edial. With his great preceptor, whom he accompanied to London, he always remained on friendly terms. He took to the stage, and became the greatest of English actors.
Johnson was the widow of a Birmingham draper, and brought her husband several hundred pounds, part of which was at once spent in hiring and furnishing a large house at Edial near Lichfield where Johnson proposed to take pupils. But no pupils came except David Garrick and his brother, the sons of an old Lichfield friend, and the "academy" was abandoned after a year and a half.
He now set up a private academy, for which purpose he hired a large house well situated near his native city. In the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1736 there is the following advertisement: "At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by SAMUEL JOHNSON."
NOW it is fixed that every man keeps to the right; or, if one is taking the wall, another yields it; and it is never a dispute. He now removed to London with Mrs. Johnson; but her daughter, who had lived with them at Edial, was left with her relations in the country. His lodgings were for some time in Woodstock-street, near Hanover-square, and afterwards in Castle-street, near Cavendish-square.
Often when he was a scholar of the University of Oxford, or master of an Academy at Edial, or a writer for the London booksellers,—in all his poverty and toil, and in all his success,—while he was walking the streets without a shilling to buy food, or when the greatest men of England were proud to feast him at their table,—still that heavy and remorseful thought came back to him:—"I was cruel to my poor father in his illness!"
His first project after his marriage was to set up a school; and, with this intention, he hired a very commodious house, at the distance of about two miles from Lichfield, called Edial Hall, which has lately been taken down, and of which a representation is to be seen in the History of Lichfield, by Mr. Harwood.
Johnson had one other recommendation a fortune, namely, of £800 little enough, even then, as a provision for the support of the married pair, but enough to help Johnson to make a fresh start. In 1736, there appeared an advertisement in the Gentleman's Magazine. "At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages by Samuel Johnson."
In 1732 or 1733 Birmingham, when Johnson first went to live there, had not, I suppose, a population of 10,000. Its growth was wonderfully rapid. The first eighteen months of his married life he lived quite in the country at Edial, two miles from Lichfield. Ante, i. 97. He was twenty-eight years old when he removed to London. Ante, i. 110.
An advertisement appeared in the papers, "At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by Samuel Johnson." But Johnson was quite unfitted to be a teacher, and the school did not prosper. "His schoolroom," says another writer, "must have resembled an ogre's den," and only two or three boys came to it.
A dominie, an auld dominie; he keepit a schule and ca'ad it an acaadamy! No more bitter taunt could have been levelled against Johnson, with his memories of Edial, near Lichfield; readers who may remember the munificent manner in which the heritors of their day had provided for Ruddiman, Michael Bruce, and others, will see the contempt that the old judge had felt for the past of the Rambler.
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