the lady of the house in the following manner : * Madam. I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure from your house this morning, but I was constrained to it by my conscience. Fifty years ago, Madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial piety, which has ever since lain heavy on my mind, and has not till this day been expiated. My father, you recollect, was a bookseller, and had long been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market x , and opening a stall for the sale of his books during that day. Confined to his bed by indisposition, he requested me, this time fifty years ago, to visit the market, and attend the stall in his place. But, Madam, my pride prevented me from doing my duty, and I gave my father a refusal. To do away the sin of this disobedience, I this day went in a postchaise to Uttoxeter, 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 ; a penance by which I trust I have propitiated heaven for this only instance, I believe, of contumacy toward my father.'
��BY MR. WICKINS.
[ c Dr. Harwood informs me that Mr. Wickins was a respectable draper in Lichfield. It is very true that Dr. Johnson was accustomed to call on him during his visits to his native town. The garden attached to his house was ornamented in the manner he describes, and no doubt was ever entertained of the exactness of his anecdotes.' Croker's Boswell, ix. 245.]
Walking one day with him in my garden at Lichfield, we entered a small meandering shrubbery, whose ' vista not lengthened to the sight/ gave promise of a larger extent. I observed, that he might perhaps conceive that he was entering
1 Life, i. 36, n. 3. Uttoxeter is so that not much trust can be about eighteen miles from Lichfield. put in this full report of Johnson's Warner visited Lichfield in 1801, words.
an
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