Not many days after Vesey's election, Mr. William Jones, a young lawyer and accomplished scholar of the Temple, who had distinguished himself at University-college with Chambers and Scott, and had this year made pleasing additions to the select store of Eastern literature, was proposed by Chambers and elected. A fifth candidate was now in agitation; proposed on the 23rd of April (when Goldsmith occupied the chair) by Johnson, and strenuously seconded by Beauclerc. This was no other than Boswell; and not a little surprised were the majority of the members to hear the name. They did not think that Johnson's love of flattery, or Beauclerc's love of a joke, would have carried either so far. But Johnson was resolute, and had but one answer to all who objected. "had refused, sir," he said afterwards to Boswell, they knew "they'd never have got in another. I'd have kept them all out." Burke had not yet seen the busy, consequential, officious young Scotchman, who had so effectually tacked himself on to their old friend; but what he had heard, induced him to express a doubt if he was 66 fit" for Gerrard-street, and the doubt was not likely to be removed by Boswell's own efforts to secure his election. He recommended himself to the various members, he tells us, as in a canvass for an election into parliament.

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"If they

Well was that seat deserved, nevertheless, by James Boswell. Johnson invented the right word to express his merit, when he called him a "clubable" man. Burke afterwards admitted that though he and several of the members had wished to keep him out, none of them were sorry when he had got in; and he told Johnson, at the same time, that their new member had so much good humour naturally, it was scarce to be held a virtue in him. Boswell was indeed eminently social, for society was his very idol, to which he made sacrifice of everything. He had all kinds of brisk and lively ways, good humour, and perpetual cheerfulness. He was to Reynolds, says Farington the academician, the harbinger of festivity. He was Lord Stowell's realisation of a good-natured jolly fellow. Everybody admits that the frosts of our English nature melted at his approach, and that the reserve which too often damps the pleasure of English society he had the happy faculty of dissipating. Malone knew his weaknesses (he always "made battle” against his account of Goldsmith, for instance, as a folly and a mistake, which, in quite as positive terms, Reynolds, Burke, Lord Charlemont, Percy, and even George Steevens also did) but he knew his strength not less. His eyes glistened, says that unimpassioned observer, and his countenance brightened up, "when he saw the human face 66 'divine." The drawback from it all, in social life, was his incontinence of tongue; which had made his name a bye-word for eavesdropper, talebearer, and babbling spy. He had in this respect

but one fault, as Goldsmith said of Hickey, but that one was a thumper. Even this fault, however, served for protection against his failings in other respects. He blabbed them all, as he blabbed everything else; and his friends had ample notice to act on the defensive. He told Johnson one day that he was occasionally troubled with fits of stinginess. "Why, sir, so am I," returned Johnson, "but I do not tell it ;" and, mindful of the warning, he took care, the next time he borrowed sixpence, to guard himself against being dunned for it. "Boswell," he said, "lend me

"sixpence-not to be repaid."

The day fixed for Boswell's ballot was Friday the 30th of April, when Beauclerc invited him to dinner, at his new house in the Adelphi ; and among the members of the club assembled at Beauclerc's as though to secure his election, were Johnson, Reynolds, Lord Charlemont, Vesey, and Langton. Goldsmith was not present; but he was the after-dinner subject of conversation. They did not sit long, however; but went off in a body to the club, leaving Boswell at Beauclerc's till the fate of his election should be announced to him. He sat in a state of anxiety, he tells us, which even the eharming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerc could not entirely dissipate; but in a short time he received the welcome tidings of his election, hastened to Gerrard-street," and was introduced to "such a society as can seldom be found." He now for the first time saw Burke: and, at the same supper-table, sat Johnson, Garrick, and Goldsmith; Mr. Jones and Doctor Nugent; Reynolds, Lord Charlemont, Langton, Chamier, Vesey, and Beauclerc. As he entered, Johnson rose with gravity to acquit himself of a pledge to his fellow-members; and, leaning on his chair as on a desk or pulpit, gave Bozzy a charge with humorous formality, pointing out the conduct expected from him as a good member of the club. A warning not to blab, or tattle, doubtless formed part of it; and the injunction was on the whole not unfaithfully obeyed. We owe to Langton, not to Boswell, the report of a capital bit of Johnson's criticism on this particular evening; when, Goldsmith having produced a printed Ode which he had been hearing read by its author in a public room (at the rate of five shillings each for admission !), Johnson thus disposed of it: "Bolder words and more timorous 66 meaning, I think, never were brought together.” Only once, does any of the club-conversation appear to have been carried away, in detail, by Boswell; and a portion of that report conveys so agreeably the unaffected social character of the Gerrard-street meetings, that it may fitly close such attempts as I have made to convey a picture of this remarkable society.

After ranging through every variety of subject, art, politics, place-hunting, debating, languages, literature, public and private

virtue (it was the night when Burke announced his famous judgment, that from all the large experience he had had, he had learnt to think

"kind.

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Let the request be made with a happy ambiguity of

expression, so that we may have the chance of his sending it also as a present." “I am willing," observed Johnson, "to offer my "services as secretary on this occasion." "As many as are for Doctor "Johnson being secretary," cried another member, "hold up your

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Carried unanimously."

"He will be our dictator," said

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hands. Boswell. "No," returned Johnson, "the company is to dictate to me. I am only to write for wine; and I am quite disinterested, as I drink none; I shall not be suspected of having forged 66 the application. I am no more than humble scribe.” "Then," interposed Burke, inveterate punster that he was, you shall pre"scribe." "Very well," cried Boswell; "the first play of words "to-day." " No, no," interrupted Reynolds, recalling a previous bad pun of Burke's "the bulls in Ireland." “Were I your dictator," resumed Johnson, "you should have no wine. It would be my "business cavere ne quid detrimenti Respublica caperet, and wine is "dangerous. Rome," he added smiling, was ruined by luxury." "Then," protested Burke, "if you allow no wine as dictator, you "shall not have me for your master of the horse." The club lives again for us very pleasantly, in this good-humoured friendly talk. Six days after Boswell's election, he was with Johnson, Goldsmith, and Langton, among the guests at the dinner table of booksellers Dilly in the Poultry. They were dissenters; and had asked two ministers of their own persuasion, Doctor Mayo and Mr. Toplady, to meet their distinguished guests. The conversation first turning upon natural history, Goldsmith contributed to it some curious facts about the partial migrations of swallows ("the stronger 66 ones migrate, the others do not "), and on the subject of the nidification of birds seemed disposed to revive the old question of instinct and reason. "Birds build by instinct," said Johnson; "they never improve; they build their first nest as well as any one they ever build." "Yet we see," remarked Goldsmith, if 66 you take away a bird's nest with the eggs in it, she will make a "slighter nest and lay again." "Sir," said Johnson, "that is "because at first she has full time and makes her nest deliberately. "In the case you mention she is pressed to lay, and must therefore “make her nest quickly.” To which Goldsmith merely added that the nidification of birds was "what is least known in natural history, "though one of the most curious things in it." But this easy flow of instructive gossip did not satisfy Boswell. He saw a great opportunity, with two dissenting parsons present, of making Johnrear ; and so straightway "introduced the subject of "toleration." Johnson and the dissenters disagreed of course; and when they put to him, as a consequence of his argument, that the persecution of the first Christians must be held to have been perfectly right, he frankly declared himself ignorant of any better way of ascertaining the truth than by persecution on the one hand and endurance on the other. "But how is a man to act, sir?" asked Goldsmith at this point. "Though firmly convinced of the truth "of his doctrine, may he not think it wrong to expose himself to

son

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it were,

"persecution? Has he a right to do so? Is it not, as "committing voluntary suicide?" "Sir, as to voluntary suicide, << as you call it," retorted Johnson, "there are twenty thousand 66 men who will go without scruple to be shot at, and mount a breach "for fivepence a-day." "But," persisted Goldsmith, "have they "a moral right to do this?" Johnson evaded the question by asserting that a man had better not expose himself to martyrdom who had any doubt about it. "He must be convinced that he "has a delegation from Heaven." "Nay,” repeated Goldsmith, apparently unconscious that he was pressing disagreeably on Johnson. "I would consider whether there is the greater chance of "good' or evil upon the whole. If I see a man who has fallen into "" a well, I would wish to help him out; but if there is a greater "probability that he shall pull me in, than that I shall pull him 66 out, I would not attempt it. So, were I to go to Turkey, I 66 might wish to convert the grand signior to the Christian "faith; but when I considered that I should probably be put to "death without effectuating my purpose in any degree, I should "keep myself quiet." To this Johnson replied by enlarging on perfect and imperfect obligations, and by repeating that a man to be a martyr, must be persuaded of a particular delegation from Heaven. "But how," still persisted Goldsmith, "is this to be "known? Our first reformers, who were burnt for not believing "bread and wine to be Christ-" "Sir," interrupted Johnson, loudly, and careless what unfounded assertion he threw out to interrupt him, they were not burnt for not believing bread and "wine to be Christ, but for insulting those who did."

What with his dislike of reforming protestants and his impatience of contradiction, Johnson had now become excited to keep the field he had so recklessly seized, and in such manner that none should dispossess him. Goldsmith suffered accordingly. Boswell describes him during the resumption and continuation of the argument, into which Mayo and Toplady again resolutely plunged with their antagonist, sitting in restless agitation from a wish to get in and "shine; " which certainly was no unnatural wish after the unfair way he had been ousted. Finding himself still excluded, however, he had taken his hat to go away; but yet remained with it for some time in his hand, like a gamester at the close of a long night, lingering still for a favourable opening to finish with success. Once he began to speak; and found himself overpowered by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the table, and did not perceive his attempt. "Thus disappointed of "his wish to obtain the attention of the company," says Boswell, "Goldsmith in a passion threw down his hat, looking angrily at Johnson, and exclaiming in a bitter tone, Take it." At this

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