Note 1151 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 7)

The Rev. R. Warner, who visited Lichfield in 1801, gives in his Tour through the Northern Counties, i. 105, a fuller account. He is clearly wrong in the date of its occurrence, and in one other matter, yet his story may in the main be true. He says that Johnson's friends at Lichfield missed him one morning; the servants said that he had set off at a very early hour, whither they knew not. Just before supper he returned. He informed his hostess of his breach of filial duty, which had happened just fifty years before on that very day. 'To do away the sin of this disobedience, I this day went,' he said, 'in a chaise to—, and going into the market at the time of high business uncovered my head, and stood with it bare an hour, before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by, and the inclemency of the weather.' This penance may recall Dante's lines,—