CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN.* 



Who does not know the story of Dr. Samuel Johnson's 

 penance in the market-place of Uttoxeter ? — how, when a 

 boy, he had refused to go there for his poor old father, who 

 therefore must needs go himself, and stand there, sick and 

 weary, at his stall, tending his stock of books ; how, when 

 Si man and at the summit of his fame, he went down to 

 Lichfield, and from there out to Uttoxeter, close by, and 

 stood bareheaded in the blazing sun, just where his father's 

 stall had been, speaking no word to any man or maid, much 

 wondered at for one sad hour by the motley crowd of traf- 

 fickers — for it was market-day. At the time of this occur- 

 rence Lichfield was a literary centre of considerable self- 

 importance. Dr. Johnson thought but slightingly of it, 

 and probably sought out no member of the Lichfield coterie 

 on the occasion of his famous visit. But here was Mr. 

 Day, the author of " Sanclford and Merton," who had his 

 portrait painted with a flash of lightning playing through 

 his hair and illuminating the pages of the book held in his 

 hand. Here was Mr. Edgeworth, father of the excellent 

 Maria, making love to his second wife, Honora Sneyd, in 

 the lifetime of the first, who had eventually four successors. 

 Honora Sneyd was the object of a passionate attachment on 

 the part of Major Andre, the unhappy spy. She lived in 

 the cathedral-close, an adopted daughter of Canon Seward, 

 whose own literary pretentions were not slight, and whose 

 daughter Anna was called the Swan of Lichfield. She was 

 extremely sentimental, according to the fashion of the time. 

 She covered many reams of paper with her verses of the 

 frosted-cake variety, and wrote besides a good deal of crit- 

 icism and biography. An essay in the last-named direction 

 is perhaps her best security from complete oblivion. It is 

 a biography of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who was born in 1731 

 and died in 1802. He was the most original and important 

 member of the Lichfield coterie. The description of his 



* Copyright, 1889, by The New Ideal Publishing Company. 



