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wished to keep him out, none of them were sorry when he had got in. Boswell was eminently social. Society indeed was his 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 the harbinger of festivity. He was Lord Stowell's realization of a good-natured jolly fellow. The frost of our English reserve melted at his approach. Malone knew his weaknesses, and always made battle' against his account of Goldsmith as a folly and a mistake (so, I may add, and in positive terms, did Reynolds, Burke, Lord Charlemont, Percy, and even George Steevens); but he also knew his strength. His eye glistened, says that unimpassioned observer, and his countenance brightened up, when he 'saw the human face divine.' The drawback from all this, 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.'

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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

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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 charming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerc could not entirely dissipate; but in a short time 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 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

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Street meetings, that it may here fitly close such attempts as I have made to convey a picture of this celebrated Club. 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 better of mankind), the conversation concluded thus. I understand,' said Burke, 'the hogshead of claret, which this society was 'favoured with by our friend the dean' (Barnard), 'is 'nearly out; I think he should be written to, to send ' another of the same kind. 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 a 'willing,' observed Johnson, 'to offer my services as secre'tary on this occasion.' 'As many as are for Doctor 'Johnson being secretary,' cried another member, 'hold up your hands. Carried unanimously.' 'He will be our dictator,' said 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 the application. I am no more than humble scribe.' Then,' interposed Burke, an inveterate punster, 'you shall prescribe.' '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

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'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 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 turned upon natural history, and Goldsmith contributed to it some curious facts about swallows' partial migrations, and the nidification of birds, which last he characterised as one of the most curious and least known things in natural history. But this easy flow of instructive gossip did not satisfy Boswell. He saw a great opportunity, with two dissenting parsons present, of making Johnson 'rear'; 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

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