From him then his son inherited,
with some other qualities, 'a vile melancholy,' which in his too strong
expression of any disturbance of the mind, 'made him mad all his life,
at least not sober.' Michael was, however, forced by the narrowness of
his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not only in his shop,
but by occasionally resorting to several towns in the neighbourhood,
some of which were at a considerable distance from Lichfield. At that
time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of England were very
rare, so that there was not one even in Birmingham, in which town old
Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market-day. He was a pretty good
Latin scholar, and a citizen so creditable as to be made one of the
magistrates of Lichfield; and, being a man of good sense, and skill in
his trade, he acquired a reasonable share of wealth, of which however
he afterwards lost the greatest part, by engaging unsuccessfully in a
manufacture of parchment. He was a zealous high-church man and royalist,
and retained his attachment to the unfortunate house of Stuart, though
he reconciled himself, by casuistical arguments of expediency and
necessity, to take the oaths imposed by the prevailing power.
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