Langton, had not abridged his merits in the philosopher's regard ; and when he went up to Trinity-college Oxford, Johnson took occasion to visit him there; and there made the acquaintance of his college chum, and junior by two years, Topham Beauclerc, grandson of the first Duke of St. Albans. These two young men had several qualities in common,-ready intellect, perfect manners, great love of literature, and a thorough admiration of Johnson; but, with these, such striking points of difference, that Johnson could not comprehend their intimacy when first he saw them together. It was not till he discovered what a scorn of fools Beauclerc blended with his love of folly, what virtues of the mind he set off against his vices of the body, and with how much gaiety and wit he carried off his licentiousness, that he became as fond of the laughing rake as of his quiet contemplative companion. "I shall have my old friend to bail out of the round-house," exclaimed Garrick, when he heard of it; and of an incident in connexion with it, that occurred in the next Oxford vacation. His old friend had turned out of his chambers, at three o'clock in the morning, to have a "frisk" with the young "dogs;" had gone to a tavern in Covent-garden, and roared out Lord Lansdowne's drinking song over a bowl of bishop; had taken a boat with them, and rowed to Billingsgate; and (according to Boswell) had resolved, with Beauclerc, "to persevere in dissipation for the "rest of the day," when Langton pleaded an engagement to breakfast with some young ladies, and was scolded by Johnson for leaving social friends to go and sit with a set of wretched un-idea'd girls. "And as for Garrick, sir," said the sage, when his fright was reported to him, "he durst not do such a thing. His wife "would not let him!" It was on hearing of similar proposed extravagances, soon after, that Beauclerc's mother angrily rebuked Johnson himself, and told him an old man should not put such things in young people's heads; but the frisking philosopher had as little respect for Lady Sydney's anger as for Garrick's decorous alarm. "She had no notion of a joke, sir," he said; "had come "late into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding!"

The taste for un-idea'd girls was not laughed out of Langton, nevertheless; and to none did his gentle domesticities become dearer than to Johnson. He left Oxford with a first-rate knowledge of Greek, and, what is of rarer growth at Oxford, with untiring and all-embracing tolerance. His manners endeared him to men from whom he differed most; he listened even better than he talked; and there is no figure at this memorable club more pleasing, none that takes kinder or vivider shape in the fancy, than Bennet Langton's. He was six feet six inches high, very meagre, stooped very much, pulled out an oblong gold snuff-box whenever

he began to talk, and had a habit of sitting with one leg twisted round the other and his hands locked together on his knee, as if fearing to occupy more space than was equitable. Beauclerc said he was like the stork standing on one leg, in Raffaelle's cartoon ; but good-naturedly; for the still surviving affection of their college-days checked even Beauclerc's propensity to satire, and as freely still, as in those college-days, Johnson frisked and philosophised with his Lanky and his Beau. The man of fashion had changed as little as the easy, kindly scholar. Alternating, as in his Oxford career, pleasure and literature, the tavern and the court, books and the gaming table, he had but widened the scene of his wit and folly, his reasoning and merriment, his polished manners and well-bred contempt, his acuteness and maliciousness. Between the men of letters at the Turk's-head, and the glittering loungers in St. James's-street, he was the solitary link of connexion; and with George Selwyn at White's, or at Strawberryhill with Walpole, was as much at home as with Johnson in Gerrard-street. It gave him an influence, a sort of secret charm, among these lettered companions, which Johnson himself very frankly confessed to. "Beauclerc could take more liberty with "him," says Boswell, "than anybody with whom I ever saw him ;" and when his friends were studying stately congratulations on his pension, and Beau simply hoped, with Falstaff, that he'd in future purge and live cleanly like a gentleman, he laughed at the advice and took it. Such, indeed, was the effect upon him of that kind of accomplishment in which he felt himself deficient, that he more than once instanced Beauclerc's talents as those which he was more disposed to envy than any other he had known. "Sir,"

he said to Boswell, "everything comes from him so easily. It appears to me that I labour when I say a good thing."

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This peculiarity in Beauclerc's conversation seems undoubtedly and half unconsciously, to have impressed every one. Boswell tries to describe it by assigning to it "that air of the world which “has I know not what impressive effect, as if there were some<< thing more than is expressed, or than perhaps we could perfectly "understand." Arthur Murphy calls it a humour which pleased the more for seeming undesigned. It might more briefly have been defined, I imagine, as the feeling of a superiority to his subject. This took away from his talk every appearance of effort. No man was ever so free, said Johnson very happily, when he was going to say a good thing, from a look which expressed that it was coming; or, when he had said it, from a look which expressed that it had come. This was a sense of the same superiority; and it gave Beauclerc a predominance of a certain sort over his company, little likely to be always pleasant, and least so when it

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pointed shafts of sarcasm against his friends. "Now that gentle'man, Mr. Beauclerc, against whom you are so violent," said Boswell one day, eager to please Johnson by defending one of his friends, “is, I know, a man of good principles." "Then he does "not wear them out in practice,” quietly retorted Beauclerc. At effective thrusts of this kind even Johnson sometimes lost so far his patience and tolerance as only to make matters worse by pushing rudely at his friend. "Sir," he would exclaim, "you never open your mouth but with intention to give pain; and you have often "given me pain, not from the power of what you said, but from "seeing your intention." The habit was doubtless an evil one, and no one suffered from it so much as Goldsmith.

His position in the club will be better understood, from this sketch of its leading members. He found himself, of course, at a great disadvantage. The leading traits of character which this narrative has exhibited, here, for the most part, told against him. If, on entering it, his rank and claims in letters had been better ascertained, more allowance would have then been made, not alone by the Hawkinses, but by the Beauclercs and Burkes, for awkwardness of manners and ungainliness of aspect, for that ready credulity which is said to be the only disadvantage of an honest man, for a simplicity of nature that should have disarmed instead of inviting ridicule, and for the too sensitive spirit which small annoyances overthrew. They who have no other means of acquiring respect than by insisting on it, will commonly succeed; but Goldsmith had too many of those other means unrecognised, and was too constantly contending for them, to have energy to spare for that simpler method. If he could only have arrived, where Steele was brought by the witty yet gentle ridicule of Dick Eastcourt, at the happiness of thinking nothing a diminution to him but what argued a depravity of his will, then might anything Beauclerc or Hawkins could have said, of his shape, his air, his manner, his speech, or his address, have but led to a manly enforcement of more real claims. But there was nothing in this respect too trifling, for him not to think a diminution, exacting effort and failure anew. It was now, more than ever, he called William Filby to his aid, and appeared in tailor's finery which made plainer the defects it was meant to hide. It was now he resented nonacceptance of himself by affecting careless judgments of others. It was now that his very avarice of social pleasure made him fretful of the restraints of Gerrard-street; and all he had suffered or enjoyed of old, in the college class room, at the inn of Ballymahon, among the Axe-lane beggars, or in the garret of Griffiths, reacted on his cordial but fitful nature;-never seriously to spoil, but very often to obscure it. Too little self-confidence begets the

forms of vanity, and self-love will exaggerate faults as well as virtues. If Goldsmith had been more thoroughly assured of his own fine genius, the slow social recognition of it would have made him less uneasy; but he was thrust suddenly into this society, with little beyond a vague sense of other claims than it was disposed to concede to him, however little it might sympathise with the special contempts of Hawkins; and what argued a doubt in others, seems to have become one to himself, which he took as doubtful means of reinforcing. If they could talk, why so could he; but unhappily he did not talk, as in festive evenings at Islington or the White-conduit, to please himself, but to force others to be pleased. Tom Davies was no very acute observer; yet even he has noted of him, that, so far from desiring to appear to the best advantage, he took more pains to be esteemed worse than he was, than others do to appear better than they are: which was but saying, awkwardly enough, that he failed to make himself understood. How time will modify all this; how far the acquisition of his fame, and its effects upon himself, will strengthen, with respect, the love which even they who most laughed at already bore him; and in how much this laughing habit will nevertheless still beset his friends, surviving its excuses and occasion,-the course of this narrative must show. That his future would more than redeem his past, Johnson was the first to maintain; for his own experience of hardship had helped his affection to discern it, and he was never, at any period of their intercourse, so forbearing as at this. Goldsmith's position in these days should nevertheless be well understood, if we would read aright the ampler chronicle which later years obtained.

He who was to be the chronicler had arrived again in London. "Look, my lord!" exclaimed Tom Davies with the voice and attitude of Horatio, addressing a young gentleman who was sitting at tea with himself and Mrs. Davies in their little back parlour, on the evening of Monday the 16th of May, and pointing to an uncouth figure advancing towards the glass door by which the parlour opened to the shop, "It comes !" The hope of the young gentleman's life was at last arrived. "Don't tell where I come from," he whispered, as Johnson entered with Arthur Murphy. "This "is Mr. Boswell, sir," said Davies; adding waggishly, “From "Scotland, sir!" "Mr. Johnson," said poor Boswell in a flutter (for the town was now ringing with Number Forty-five, Bute had just retired before the anti-Scottish storm, and Johnson's antipathies were notorious), "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot "help it." "That, sir, I find," said the remorseless wit, "is what "a very great many of your countrymen cannot help. Now," he added, turning to Davies as he sat down, regardless of the stunned

young gentleman, "what do you think of Garrick? He has "refused me an order to the play for Miss Williams, because he "knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth "three shillings." Boswell roused himself at this, for what he thought would be a flattering thing to say. He knew that Garrick

had, but a few years before, assisted this very Miss Williams by a free benefit at his theatre; but he did not yet know how little Johnson meant by such a sally, or that he claimed to himself a kind of exclusive property in Garrick, for abuse as well as praise. "O, sir," he exclaimed, "I cannot think Mr. Garrick would "grudge such a trifle to you." "Sir!" rejoined the other, with a look and tone that shut up his luckless admirer for the rest of the evening, "I have known David Garrick longer than you have "done; and I know no right you have to talk to me on the "subject." A characteristic commencement of a friendship very interesting to all men. The self-complacent young Scot could hardly have opened it better, than by showing how much his coolness and self-complacency could bear. He rallied from the shock; and, though he did not open his mouth again, very widely opened his ears, and showed eagerness and admiration unabated.

"Don't be uneasy,” said Davies, following him to the door as he went away: "I can see he likes you very well." So emboldened, the "giant's den" itself was daringly invaded after a few days; and the giant, among other unusual ways of showing his benevolence, took to praising Garrick this time. After that, the fat little pompous figure now eager to make itself the giant's shadow, might be seen commonly on the wait for him at his various haunts: in ordinaries at the social dinner hour, or by Temple-bar in the jovial midnight watches (Johnson's present habit, as he tells us himself, was to leave his chambers at four in the afternoon, and seldom to return till two in the morning), to tempt him to the Mitre. They supped at that tavern for the first time on the 25th of June; but Boswell, who tells us what passed, has failed to tell us at what particular dish it was of their "good supper," or at what glass of the "two bottles" of port they disposed of, that Johnson suddenly roared across the table, "Give me your hand; “I have taken a liking to you." They talked of Goldsmith. He was a somewhat uneasy subject to Boswell, who could not comprehend how he had managed to become so great a favourite with so great a man. For he had published absolutely nothing with his name (Boswell himself had just published Newmarket, a Tale); he was a man that as yet you never heard of, but as one Dr. Goldsmith ;" and all who knew him seemed to know that he had passed a very loose, odd, scrambling kind of life. "Sir," said Johnson, "Goldsmith is one of the first men we