' BOSWELL.
[1149] See vol. i. p. 37. BOSWELL.
[1150] According to Miss Seward, who was Mr. White's cousin, 'Johnson
once called him "the rising strength of Lichfield."' Seward's
_Letters_, i. 335.
[1151] 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,--
'Quando vivea piu glorioso, disse,
Liberamente nel campo di Siena,
Ogni vergogna deposta, s'affisse.
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