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. "If they 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 "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 election into Parliament.' Well was that seat deserved, nevertheless, by James Boswell. Johnson invented the right word to express his merit when he called him a "clubbable" 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-humor 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 course; but apart from the fact that this was an official note, hasty judgments are not to be formed upon the mere manner of wording letters in the last or preceding centuries. With the pen in his hand, Johnson was "Sir" and "your humble servant" often to the dearest of his friends; and, from "madam" to "my dearest mistress" in his letters to Mrs. Thrale, or from "dear madam" to "my dearest love" in his letters to his daughterin-law, were with him the most ordinary transitions within the space of very few lines. I say so much, because hasty inferences have more than once been made from supposed "coolnesses" in Johnson's letters. 1 Boswell, iv. 75. 2 Ib. iv. 76. 3 "Mr. Boswell," says Malone, "professed the Scotch and the English law; but had never taken very great pains on the subject. His father, Lord Auchinleck, told him one day that it would cost him more trouble to hide his ignorance in these professions than to show his knowledge. and lively ways, good-humor, and perpetual cheerfulness. He was to Reynolds, says Ffarington, the academician, the harbinger of festivity.' He was Lord Stowell's realization 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 divine." The drawback from it all, in social life, was his incontinence of tongue, which had made his name a byword for eavesdropper, tale-bearer, 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 defen This Boswell owned he had found to be true." I quote this from a paper in the European Magazine. 1 "Sir Joshua was never more happy than when, on such occasions, Boswell was seated within his hearing." The Royal Academy, some years later, gratified their president by electing him secretary for foreign correspondence, and so constituting him an honorary member of their body. See Ffarington's Memoir, cciv. 2 ? I am bound to add, at the same time, that one of the last sneers levelled at Goldsmith, while he yet lived, proceeded from this clever, unscrupulous man, always consistently bent on making what mischief he could, if consistent in nothing else. Thanking Garrick, on the 6th of March, 1774, for his vote at the club, and alluding to Charles Fox's election with his own, he proceeds to indulge himself with a sarcasm on Goldsmith's fine waistcoats and his homely looks in spite of them. "If the bon-ton should prove a contagious disorder among us, it will be curious to trace its progress. I have already seen it breaking out in Dr. G—, under the form of many a waistcoat; but I believe Dr. G will be the last man in whom the symptoms of it will be detected."-Garrick Correspondence, i. 613. |