Samuel Johnson

I've decided this should be Samuel Johnson day. There is a story about him which says when he was only three years old, he "tread upon a duckling," the eleventh of a brood, and killed it. He then wrote the following epitaph to his mother:

"Here lies good master duck,
Whom Samuel Johnson trod on:
If it had liv'd, it had been good luck,
For then we'd had an odd one."

Do you believe it to be true? Could a three year old have written this? Even Samuel Johnson, the author of the first dictionary? Johnson said later in life, "few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forego the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper."

I find his whole life and story to be profoundly amusing. For the best biography perhaps ever written, read Boswell's, The Life of Samuel Johnson.