Thinking

Popped into Lichfield to meet a friend for lunch and had a proper look at the statue of Samuel Johnson in the marketplace beforehand. His birthplace is a stones throw away. The statue is apparently based on one by Donatello and shows Johnson deep in thought sitting in a chair on top of books, maybe volumes of his dictionary. Underneath is a tableau of him doing penance in Uttoxeter market. I was curious about what that was and google revealed that as a teenager when asked by his father to go and man his bookstall in Uttoxeter market when he was ill, he refused. He felt guilty about it years later and went and stood bare headed in the rain in the marketplace where his father’s stall would have been as penance.