The Johnson monument in Lichfield marketplace is now wearing the wreath that is hung on it on the great man's birthday every year (September 18th). Beneath the wreath is one of three reliefs depicting scenes from Johnson's Lichfield years: this one shows him being borne to school (Lichfield grammar school, which also produced David Garrick and Elias Ashmole) by his schoolmates, who had clearly formed an early estimate of his extraordinary gifts. The other two plaques depict his famous penance in Uttoxeter marketplace, where he stood bareheaded in the rain to atone for an early act of disobedience to his father, and, more surprisingly, the occasion on which he was taken by his father, at the age of three, to listen to Dr Sachaverell, a famous and controversial High Anglican clergyman, preaching in the cathedral. I've written before, on his birthday, about Johnson's birth and early years in Lichfield – here's the link...
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