In a tavern, a club, a drawing-room, or a post-chaise he would argue, and have the best of the argument, on the institution of slavery or the choice of books for babies; on the government of India or the poetry of Gray; on the doctrine of free will or the points of a bull-dog; on the management of a university press or the writing of a good cookery book. In 1737 he came to London with twopence-halfpenny and a half-written tragedy in his pocket and for nearly twenty years did the work of an unknown literary drudge; for the last thirty years of his life he was the dominant figure in the educated society of London, laying down the law on politics to Edmund Burke, on literature to Oliver Goldsmith, on painting to Sir Joshua Reynolds, on history to Edward Gibbon, on acting to David Garrick, and on everything to James Boswell. Let us see what Boswell has to tell us. _School Days_ Johnson was not born into the world at which we have just glanced. Indeed, had his character been less remarkable, he might have lived and died a schoolmaster, or a bookseller, in a country town. For his father, Michael Johnson, kept a bookshop in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and here his son Samuel was born in 1709. Of old Mr Johnson Boswell says that "he was a pretty good Latin scholar, and a citizen so creditable as to be made one of the magistrates of Lichfield.... He was a zealous high-church man and royalist and retained his attachment to the unfortunate house of Stuart." Now, according to a modern poet: Every boy and every gal That's born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative. In those days men talked of Whig and Tory as we talk of Liberal and Conservative, and if ever a man was born a Tory, that man was Samuel Johnson. To be a Tory in 1710 meant, generally speaking, to disapprove of the Revolution of 1688, when James II was driven from his throne and William III summoned to rule in his place; and great excitement had been caused in the country by a sermon preached at St Paul's against the principles of the Revolution by a certain Dr Sacheverell. A visit of this preacher to Lichfield gave young Samuel Johnson the opportunity to shew himself what Boswell calls "the infant Hercules of Toryism." Here is the story told by a Lichfield lady: "When Dr Sacheverel was at Lichfield, Johnson was not quite three years old. My grandfather Hammond observed him at the cathedral perched upon his father's shoulders, listening and gaping at the much celebrated preacher. Mr Hammond asked Mr Johnson how he could possibly think of bringing such an infant to church and in the midst of so great a croud. He answered, because it was impossible to keep him at home; for, young as he was, he believed he had caught the publick spirit and zeal for Sacheverel, and would have staid for ever in the church, satisfied with beholding him."