“What a pity that you did not go boldly in! He would have received you with all kindness.”’ Rogers’s Table Talk, p. 9. For Johnson’s levee see post, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell’s Collectanea.
[730] ‘George Langton,’ writes Mr. Best in his Memorials (p. 66), ‘shewed me his pedigree with the names and arms of the families with which his own had intermarried. It was engrossed on a piece of parchment about ten inches broad, and twelve to fifteen feet long. “It leaves off at the reign of Queen Elizabeth,” said he.’
[731] Topham Beauclerk was the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk, fifth son of the first Duke of St. Alban’s. He was therefore the great-grandson of Charles II. and Nell Gwynne. He was born in Dec. 1739. In my Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics I have put together such facts as I could find about Langton and Beauclerk.
[732] Mr. Best describes Langton as ‘a very tall, meagre, long-visaged man, much resembling 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.’ Best’s Memorials, p. 62. Miss Hawkins writes:—‘If I were called on to name the person with whom Johnson might have been seen to the fairest advantage, I should certainly name Mr. Langton.’ Miss Hawkins’s Memoirs, i. 144. Mrs. Piozzi wrote in 1817:—‘I remember when to have Langton at a man’s house stamped him at once a literary character.’ Hayward’s Piozzi, ii. 203.
[733] In the summer of 1759. See post, under April 15, 1758, and 1759.
[734] Lord Charlemont said that ‘Beauclerk possessed an exquisite taste, various accomplishments, and the most perfect good breeding. 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. Devoted at one time to pleasure, at another to literature, sometimes absorbed in play, sometimes in books, he was altogether one of the most accomplished, and when in good humour and surrounded by those who suited his fancy, one of the most agreeable men that could possibly exist.’ Lord Charlemont’s Life, i. 210. Hawkins writes (Life, p. 422) that ‘over all his behaviour there beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and good-humour as communicated itself to all around him.’ Mrs. Piozzi said of him:—‘Topham Beauclerk (wicked and profligate as he wished to be accounted) was yet a man of very strict veracity. Oh Lord! how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk.’ Hayward’s Piozzi, i. 348. Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 40) said that ‘Beauclerk was a strangely absent person.’ He once went to dress for a dinner-party in his own house. ‘He forgot all about his guests; thought that it was bed-time, and got into bed. His servant, coming to tell him that his guests were waiting for him, found him fast asleep.’
[735] It was to the Round-house that Captain Booth was first taken in Fielding’s Amelia, Book i, chap. 2.
[736]
‘Blends, in exception to all general rules,
Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools.’
Pope, Moral Essays, ii. 275.
[737] In the college which The Club was to set up at St. Andrew’s, Beauclerk was to have the chair of natural philosophy. Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 25, 1773. Goldsmith, writing to Langton in 1771, says: ‘Mr. Beauclerk is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle; deep in chymistry and physics.’ Forster’s Goldsmith, ii. 283. Boswell described to Temple, in 1775, Beauclerk’s villa at Muswell Hill, with its ‘observatory, laboratory for chymical experiments.’ Boswell’s Letters, p. 194.
[738] ‘I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.’ 1 Henry IV. Act v. sc. 4.
[739] ‘Bishop. A cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges, and sugar.’ Johnson’s Dictionary.
[740] Mr. Langton has recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are in Lord Lansdowne’s Drinking Song to Sleep, and run thus:—
‘Short, very short be then thy reign,
For I’m in haste to laugh and drink again.’ BOSWELL.
Lord Lansdowne was the Granville of Pope’s couplet—
‘But why then publish? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.’
Prologue to the Satires, 1.135.
[741] Boswell in Hebrides (Aug. 18, 1773) says that Johnson, on starting from Edinburgh, left behind in an open drawer in Boswell’s house ‘one volume of a pretty full and curious Diary of his life, of which I have a few fragments.’ He also states (post, under Dec 9, 1784):—‘I owned to him, that having accidentally seen them [two quarto volumes of his Life] I had read a great deal in them.’ It would seem that he had also transcribed a portion.
[742] This is inconsistent with what immediately follows, for No. 39 on Sleep was published on March 20.
[743] Hawkesworth in the last number of The Adventurer says that he had help at first from A.; ‘but this resource soon failing, I was obliged to carry on the publication alone, except some casual supplies, till I obtained from the gentlemen who have distinguished their papers by T and Z, such assistance as I most wished.’ In a note he says that the papers signed Z are by the Rev. Mr. Warton. The papers signed A are written in a light style. In Southey’s Cowper, i. 47, it is said that Bonnell Thornton wrote them.
[744] Boswell had read the passage carelessly. Statius is mentioned, but the writer goes on to quote Cowley, whose Latin lines C. B. has translated. Johnson’s Works, iv. 10.
[745] Malone says that ‘Johnson was fond of him, but latterly owned that Hawkesworth—who had set out a modest, humble man—was one of the many whom success in the world had spoiled. He was latterly, as Sir Joshua Reynolds told me, an affected insincere man, and a great coscomb in his dress. He had no literature whatever.’ Prior’s Malone, p. 441. See post, April 11 and May 7, 1773, and Boswell’s Hebrides, Oct. 3.
[746] ‘Johnson’s statement to Warton is definite and is borne out by internal evidence, if internal evidence can be needful when he had once made a definite statement. The papers signed Misargyrus, the first of which appeared on March 3, are all below his style. They were not, I feel sure, written by him, and are improperly given in the Oxford edition of his works. I do not find in them even any traces of his hand. The paper on Sleep, No. 39, is I am almost sure, partly his, but I believe it is not wholly. In the frequency of quotations in the first part of it I see another, and probably a younger author. The passage on the ‘low drudgery of digesting dictionaries’ is almost certainly his. Dr. Bathurst, perhaps, wrote the Essay, and Johnson corrected it. Whether it was Johnson’s or not, it was published after the letter to Dr. Warton was written.
[747] See post, April 25, 1778, for an instance where Johnson’s silence did not imply assent.
[748] ‘One evening at the Club Johnson proposed to us the celebrating the birth of Mrs. Lennox’s first literary child, as he called her book, [The Life of Harriet Stuart, a novel, published Dec. 1750] by a whole night spent in festivity. Our supper was elegant, and Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay-leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an authoress, and had written verses; and further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not till he had invoked the Muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows. About five Johnson’s face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade.’ Hawkins’s Johnson, p. 286. See post, 1780, in Mr. Langton’s ‘Collection,’ and May 15, 1784.
[749] In a document in the possession of one of Cave’s collateral descendants which I have seen dated May 3, 1754, and headed, ‘Present state of the late Mr. Edward Cave’s effects,’ I found entered ‘Magazine,