18th September
The Johnson Sermon
Samuel Johnson. Source: Alamy Stock Photos
Today the story of Samuel Johnson’s moment of remorse and regret is told to a group of Uttoxeter schoolchildren at 11am at the town’s market place. Known as the Johnson Sermon, this tale of reflection and grief is related today, Johnson’s birthday. Samuel was an ambitious young man, eager to find fame as a writer and the compiler of the first dictionary of the English language. Despite requests, he refused to help his father in his small bookstall in Uttoxeter, viewing such an occupation as petty and embarrassing compared to the glamorous cafe society Johnson frequented in London. And then his father died.
In an act of guilty sorrow, Johnson travelled back to the town of his birth and returned to the site of his father’s bookstall, now empty and deserted. He stood solitary and alone, bare headed, in the rain contemplating his loss and folly, living the morality story that if you don’t tell your parents you love them while they are alive, it is too late to do so when they are gone.