or Uttoxeter, on one of the few purely
sentimental pilgrimages that I ever undertook, to see the very spot where
Johnson had stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the town (its name is
pronounced Yuteox'eter) as being about nine miles off from Lichfield, but
the county-map would indicate a greater distance; and by rail, passing
from one line to another, it is as much as eighteen miles. I have always
had an idea of old Michael Johnson sending his literay merchandise by
carrier's wagon, journeying to Uttoxeter afoot on market-day morning,
selling "books" through the busy hours, and returning to Lichfield at
night. This could not possibly have been the case.

Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects that I saw, with a
green field or two between them and me, were the tower and gray steeple of
a church, rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. A very
short walk takes you from the station up into the town. It had been my
previous impression that the market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately
round about the church; and, if I remember the narrative aright, Johnson,
or Boswell in his behalf, describes his father's book-stall as standing in
the market-place close beside the sacred edifice.

It is impossible for me to say what changes may have occurred in the
topography of the town, during almost a century and a half since Michael
Johnson retired from business, and ninety years, at least, since his son's
penance was performed. But the church has now merely a street of ordinary
width passing around it, while the market-place, tho near at hand, neither
forms a part of it nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng and
bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and surge against the
churchyard and the old gray tower. Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two
brings a person from the center of the market-place to the church-door;
and Michael Johnson might very conveniently have located his stall and
laid out his literary ware in the corner at the tower's base; better
there, indeed, than in the busy center of an agricultural market. But the
picturesque arrangement and full impressiveness of the story absolutely
require that Johnson shall not have done his penance in a corner, ever so
little retired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the crowd--the
midmost man of the market-place--a central image of Memory and Remorse,
contrasting with and overpowering the petty materialism around him. He
himself, having t