1763.

or vivider shape in the fancy, than Bennet Langton's. He was Æt. 35. 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

* Miss Hawkins's Memoirs, ii. 282.

+ Mr. Best (Personal and Literary Memorials, 62), gives another authority for this saying. "In early youth I knew Bennet Langton.. he was a very tall, meagre, long-visaged man, much resembling, according to Richard Paget, a stork standing on one leg near the shore, in Raphael's cartoon of the miraculous draught of "fishes. His manners were, in the highest degree, polished; his conversation "mild, equable, and always pleasing. He had the uncommon faculty ('tis strange it "should be an uncommon faculty,) of being a good reader; and read Shakspeare "with such animation, such just intonation and inflexion of the voice, that they “who heard him declared themselves more delighted with his recitation than with an exhibition of the same dramatic piece on the stage." It may be worth mention that Langton succeeded Johnson as professor of ancient literature in the Royal Academy; and as I cannot always praise Miss Hawkins, I may as well add that her sketch of Langton is very agreeable. Not that even her liking for him, however, is free from uncomfortable touches; "for," she says, we females of the family "might get through much occupation of the after-breakfast description, drive out "for two or three hours, return and dress, and my mother might turn in her "mind the postponement of dinner, all within the compass of a morning visit from "Bennet Langton. But I never saw my father weary of his conversation, or "knew any body complain of him as a visitor." Memoirs, i. 233, 234.

He wasted a fortune in pleasure and at the gaming-table, yet at his death his library was sold by auction for upwards of 60007. With it was sold, let me add,

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at the Turk's-head, and the glittering loungers in St. 1763. James's-street, he was the solitary link of connexion; and Et. 35. with George Selwyn at White's, or at Strawberry-hill with Walpole, was as much at home as with Johnson in Gerrardstreet. 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 those of any whom he had known.t

A 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 something more than is expressed, or than

a portrait of Johnson, which now became Langton's property, and on the frame of which had been inscribed by Beauclerc, "Ingenium ingens inculto latet hoc sub corpore: " which inscription Langton caused to be defaced. "It was kind in you "to take it off," said Johnson to him, complacently; and then, after a short pause, with a manly kindness and delicacy of feeling, he added, "and not unkind in him to "put it on." He was much affected by Beauclerc's direction in his will, that he should be buried by the side of his mother. Boswell, vii. 310-11.

* Boswell, i. 298. Johnson was some time with Beauclerk at his house at Windsor, where he was entertained with experiments in natural philosophy. One Sunday, when the weather was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him, insensibly, to saunter about all the morning. They went into a churchyard, in the time of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of the tombstones. Now, sir (said Beauclerc), you are like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice." + Ibid, vii. 321.

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Æt. 35.

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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. 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 that expressed that it had come.t 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 pointed shafts of sarcasm against his friends. Even Johnson was not tolerant of these. "Sir," he said to him, after one of his malicious sallies, 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 No one suffered from the evil habit so much

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intention."

as Goldsmith.

Essay, 28. Boswell, vii. 265. "As Johnson and I," Boswell adds, accompanied Sir Joshua Reynolds in his coach, Johnson said, 'There is in "Beauclerk a predominance over his company, that one does not like. But he is 66 6 a man who has lived so much in the world, that he has a short story on every "'occasion: he is always ready to talk, and is never exhausted." "

Boswell, vii. 321. "Sir," he said to Boswell, on another occasion, " ' everything comes from him so easily. It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing." BOSWELL. "You are loud, Sir, but it is not an effort of mind." I could give many examples of this exquisite ease of Beauclerk's talk, but one perhaps will be enough. During one of the frequent disputes when the whigs, "the cursed whigs," "the bottomless whigs," as Johnson called them, had become predominant in the club, and when, in the course of repelling a bitter attack on Fox and Burke, Beauclerk had fallen foul of George Steevens, Boswell interposed: "The gentleman, Mr. Beauclerk, against whom you are so violent, is, I know, a man of good principles." BEAUCLERC. "Then he does not wear them out in practice." Bos. vii. 123.

Lord Charlemont, who loved him thoroughly, has not omitted to observe this, "He was eccentric, often querulous, entertaining a contempt for the generality "of the world, which the politeness of his manners could not always conceal; "but to those whom he liked, most generous and friendly." Hardy's Life, i. 344. And see Boswell, vii. 258-60.

His position in the club will be better understood, from 1763. this sketch of its leading members. He found himself, of Æt. 35. 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

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* The reader who is not already familiar with this wise and exquisite paper will thank me for referring him to it in the 468th number of the Spectator. How exquisite are the subjoined passages in thought as well as style! "It is an "Insolence natural to the Wealthy, to affix, as much as in them lies, the "Character of a Man to his Circumstances. Thus it is ordinary with them to praise faintly the good Qualities of those below them, and say, It is very extra"ordinary in such a Man as he is, or the like, when they are forced to acknowledge "the Value of him whose Lowness upbraids their Exaltation. It is to this "Humour only, that it is to be ascribed, that a quick Wit in Conversation, a nice "Judgment upon any Emergency that could arise, and a most blameless inoffen"sive Behaviour, could not raise this Man above being received only upon the

1763.

respect too trifling for him not to think a diminution, Æt. 35. 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 non-acceptance 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 Gerrardstreet; 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

"Foot of contributing to Mirth and Diversion. . . . It is certainly as great an "Instance of Self-love to a Weakness, to be impatient of being mimick'd, as any 66 can be imagined. There were none but the Vain, the Formal, the Proud, or "those who were incapable of amending their Faults, that dreaded him; to others "he was in the highest Degree pleasing; and I do not know any Satisfaction of 66 any indifferent kind I ever tasted so much, as having got over an Impatience of "my seeing myself in the Air he could put me when I have displeased him. It "is indeed to his exquisite Talent this way, more than any Philosophy I could "read on the Subject, that my Person is very little of my Care; and it is "indifferent to me what is said of my Shape, my Air, my Manner, my Speech, or "my Address. It is to poor Eastcourt I chiefly owe that I am arrived at the Happiness of thinking nothing a Diminution to me, but what argues a Depravity " of my Will."