sharp sense, his quiver full of jibes, time- | life, as an exact contrast to his beloved wasting, money-wasting, foreign as Satan friend Beauclerk, apt to take things a and his pomps to his sweet-natured college shade too seriously. He was rather inert, companion, struck the doctor in his own mentally and physically, having, morepolitical weak spot. The likeness to over, that "rarer quality than any which Charles the Second was enough to disarm commands success." He wrote, in 1760, Johnson at the very moment when he was a little book of essays entitled "Rustics,' calling up his most austere frown; it was which never got beyond the passivity of enough to turn the vinegar of his wrath to manuscript. He fulfilled beautifully, adds the milk of kindness. No odder or sin- Miss Hawkins, "the pious injunction of cerer testimony could he have given to Sir Thomas Browne, 'to sit quietly in the his inexplicable liking for that royal scape- soft showers of Providence, and might, grace, than that he allowed the latter's without injustice, be characterized as utgreat-grandson to tease him and tyrannize terly unfit for every species of activity." over him during an entire lifetime. It is Yet at the call of duty, so nobly was the not so given to every man in the flesh to natural man dominated by his unclouded attest his allegiance. Mr. Topham Beau will, he girded himself to any exertion. clerk literally bewitched Dr. Samuel John- Indulgence in wine was natural to him, son; the stolid English moralist enrap- and he felt its need to sharpen and rouse tured with the antics of a Jack-a-lantern! | his intellect; "but the idea of Bennet He allowed his pranks and quibbles, rejoiced in his taste and literary learning, admired him indiscreetly, followed his whims meekly, expostulated with him almost against his traitorous impulses, and clung to him to the end in perfect fondness and faith. Bennet Langton was a mild young visionary, humane, tolerant, and generous in the extreme; modest and contemplative, averse to dissipation; a perfect talker, a perfect listener, with a smile sweet as a child's, which lives yet among his kindred on the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was six feet six inches tall, slenderly built, and apt to stoop from old habits of bookishness. The ladies sat about him in drawingrooms, said Edmund Burke, like maids around a Maypole. Beauclerk had more gaiety and grace, and domineered every one he knew by sheer force of high spirits. His faults were all on the surface, and easy to be forgiven for the sake of his genuine worth. It was he who most troubled the good doctor, he for whom he suffered in silence, with whom he wrangled; he whose insuperable taunting promise, never reaching any special development, vexed and disheartened him; yet, perhaps because of these very things, though Bennet Langton was infinitely more to his mind, it was Absalom, once again, whom the old fatherly heart loved best.

Miss Hawkins, in her memoirs, says: "Were I called on to name the person with whom Johnson might have been seen to the fairest advantage, I should certainly name Mr. Langton." His deferent, suave manner was the best possible foil to the doctor's extraordinary explosions. He had supreme self-command; no one ever saw him angry; and in most matters of

Langton being what is called 'overtaken,'" wrote the same associate, "is too preposterous to be dwelt on." We have one delicious anecdote to illustrate Langton's Greek serenity. Talking to a company of a chilly forenoon in his own house, he paused to say that the fire might go out, if it lacked attention a brief, casual, murmurous interruption. He resumed his clear-voiced discourse, breaking presently, and pleading abstractedly, with eye in air: "Pray ring for coals!" All sat quietly amused, looking at the fire, and so little solicitous that straightway Langton was off again, on the stream of his soft eloquence. In a few minutes came another lull: "Did anybody answer that bell?" A general negative. “Did anybody ring that bell?" A sly shaking of heads. Why, the fire will be out! he sighed. And once more the inspired monody soared among the clouds, at last dropping meditatively to the hearthstone: "Dear, dear! the fire is out."

Langton was always the centre of a group, wherever he happened to be, talking delightfully and twirling the oblong gold-mounted snuff-box, which promptly appeared as his conversation began; a conspicuous figure, with his height, his courteous manner, his mild beauty, and his habit of crossing his arms over his breast, or locking his hands together on his knee. He had a queerness of constitution which seemed to leave him at his lowest ebb every afternoon about two of the clock, forgetful, weary, confused, and with all his ideas dispersed. After a little food, he was himself again. He ran no chance of sustenance at dinner-parties, even waiving his delicate appetite, “such was the perpetual flow of his conversa

tion, and such the incessant claim made upon him."

of sound understanding, and remarked sardonically, "I hope he has left me a legacy." Lastly, the entire situation seemed to strike him as so exceedingly comical that he laid hold of a post on his way home, and roared so load that in the silence of the night his voice could be heard from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch. But in due time the breach, whatever the cause, was healed. The doctor, in sentences: "We are all that ever we were. Langton, though without malice, is not without resentment." The two could not keep apart very long, despite all the disagreement and all the unreason in the world. Another memorable passage-atarms happened in the course of one of Johnson's sicknesses, when he solemnly implored Bennet Langton, in the cloistral silence of his chamber, to tell him wherein his life had been faulty. His shy and sagacious monitor wrote down for accusation a number of Scriptural texts recommending tolerance, patience, compassion, meekness, and other spiritual ingredients which were notably lacking in the stalwart doctor's social composition. The penitent thanked Langton humbly and earnestly on taking the paper from his hand; but presently turned his short-sighted eyes on him from the pillow, and exclaimed in

Johnson valued Langton for his piety, his ancient descent, his amiable behavior, and his knowledge of Greek: "Who in this town knows anything of Clenardus, sir, but you and I?" he would say, for Langton's enthusiasm had taught him Clenardus's grammar from cover to cover. In the midst of his talk Langton would fall with charming grace into the "vow-writing of it, uses one of his balancing elled undertone" of the tongue he loved, correcting himself with a smile, a wave of the hands, and his wonted apologetic phrase: "And so it goes on!" in deference to the un-Hellenic ears of his auditors, and in gentle palliation of his own little thoughtlessness. It must have been a satisfaction afterwards to Johnson that his scholarly friend refused to sign the famous round robin concerning poor Goldsmith's epitaph, which besought him to "disgrace the walls of Westminster with an English inscription." For Bennet Langton Johnson had nothing but praise and affectionate ardor. "He is one of those to whom Nature has not spread her volumes, nor uttered her voices in vain." "Earth does not bear a worthier gentleman." "I know not who will go to Heaven if Langton does not." Yet even with this "angel of a man," as Miss Hawkins names him, the doctor had one seri-a loud, angry, suspicious tone, "What's ous and ludicrous quarrel. He considered it the sole grave fault of Langton, that he was too ready to introduce religious discussion into a mixed assembly, where he knew any two of the company would be scarcely of the same mind. On Boswell's suggestion that Bennet did it for the sake of instruction, Johnson replied angrily that he had no more right to take that means of gaining information, than he had to pit two persons against each other in a duel for the sake of learning the art of self-defence. Some indiscretion of this sort seems to have alienated the friends for the first and last time; unless Croker's conjecture be true that the quarrel which threatened to break a friendship of twenty years' standing arose from Langton's settling his estate by will upon his three sisters. On hearing of this the Great Cham grumbled and fumed, politely applied to the Misses Langton the pertinent title of "three dowdies," and reiterated, with all the prejudices of feudalism, that "an ancient estate, sir! an ancient estate, should always go to the males." Then he belabored the lawyer who had drawn up the document for his laxity in allowing Langton to pass as one

your drift, sir?" The exquisite comedy of it! "And when I questioned him," so Johnson afterwards told his blustering tale, "when I questioned him as to what occasion I had given him for such animadversion, all that he could say amounted to this, that I sometimes contradicted people in conversation! Now what harm does it do any man to be contradicted?"

As for Topham Beauclerk, more volatile than Langton, he had as steady a "sunshine of cheerfulness" for his heritage. Johnson, bewailing his own morbid habits of mind, once said: "Some men, and very thinking men too, have not these vexing thoughts. Sir Joshua Reynolds is the same all the year round; Beauclerk, when not ill and in pain, is the same." Boswell attests that Beauclerk took more liberties with Johnson than durst any man alive, and that Johnson was more disposed to envy Beauclerk's talents than those of any man he had ever known. He was a favorite with such men as Selwyn and Walpole, and quite their match in ease and astuteness. He alternated the gaming-table with court, the civilities of the drawingroom with the free Bohemian intellectuality of the club. His unresting sarcasm

66

often hurt Goldsmith and irritated John- virtue) angry; and he was soothed only at son, though Bennet Langton was never the end by one of Topham's adroit and grazed. He was a "pestilent wit," as affectionate replies. Sir," the doctor Anthony à Wood put it of Marvell, and began sternly, at another time, after lis could talk even Garrick blind. "No tening to some mischievous waggery, man," ran Johnson's fine eulogium, "was "you never open your mouth but with the ever freer, when he was about to say a intention to give pain ; and you often give good thing, from a look which expressed me pain, not from the power of what you that it was coming, nor, when he had say, but from seeing your intention." And said it, from a look which expressed that again: "Your mind is all virtue, your it had come." He was no disguiser of body all vice." When Beauclerk would his hikes and dislikes, and was often quer- have shown resentment, Johnson stopped ulous and eccentric. Politics and poli-him with a gesture: "Nay, sir, Alexander, ticians he avoided as much as possible. marching in triumph into Babylon, would His natural and noble scorn of oppressors not desire more to be said to him." "You was his finest quality; he had also great have, sir!" he said once, adapting the tact, spirit, and independence. His own poet's line and perhaps conscious of Rochinsuperable idleness (for he was as listless ester's famous epigram, "a love of folly, by grace as Langton was by nature) he and a scorn of fools; everything you do recognized, and lightly deprecated. What attests the one, and everything you say, he chose to call his leisure (again the an- the other." cestral Stuart trait!) he dedicated to the natural sciences. "I see Mr. Beauclerk often both in town and country," wrote Goldsmith to Bennet Langton. "He is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle, deep in chemistry and physics." When there was some fanciful talk of setting up the club as a college, "to draw a wonderful concourse of students," Beauclerk, by unanimous vote, was elected to the professorship of natural philosophy.

Beauclerk had ever ready some quaint simile, or odd application out of books. Referring to Langton's habit of sitting or standing against the fireplace, with one long leg twisted about the other, "as if fearing to occupy too much space," he said his friend was for all the world like the stork in Raphael's cartoon of the Miraculous Draught. One of his happiest hits, and certainly his boldest, was made when Johnson was being congratu lated by some friends on his pension: Johnson's influence on him, potent" now it was to be hoped," whispered the though it was, was chiefly negative. It kept him from saying and doing questionable things, and preserved in him an outward decorum towards institutions and customs, rather than incited him to make of his manifold talents the "illustrious fig- Very soon after leaving Oxford Beauure" which Langton's affectionate eye clerk became engaged to a Miss Draycott; discerned in a vain anticipation. Beau- but some coldness on his part, or some clerk and the doctor went about together, sensitiveness on hers, broke off the match. and had some amusing experiences. In His fortune-hunting parents were disapcompany once with a number of clergy-pointed, as the lady owned several leadmen, who thought to meet their guests on common ground by assuming a great deal of noisy jollity, Johnson, not duly entertained, sat in grim silence for some time, and then said to his disciple, by no means in a whisper, "Sir, this merriment of parsons is mighty offensive!"

Johnson and his " Beau "had their many combats, "like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man o'war;" the younger smooth, sharp, and civil, the other indig. nantly dealing with the butt-end of personality. Boswell gives a long account of a dispute concerning a murderer, and the evidence of his having carried two pistols. Beauclerk was right, but Johnson was (which gave him as solid a sense of

favorite, in a version of Falstaff's celebrated vow, "that he would purge and live cleanly as a gentleman should do." Johnson seems to have taken the hint in good humor, and actually to have profited by it.

mines in her own right. That same year, with Bennet Langton for companion part of the way, Beauclerk, whose health, never robust, now began to give him anxiety, set out on a Continental tour. Baretti received him kindly at Milan, on Johnson's urgent and friendly letter of introduction; and the young Englishman, by his subsequent knowledge of Italian popular customs, was able to testify in Baretti's favor, when the latter was in trouble in London, and with Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Johnson, to help him towards his acquittal. At Venice it was reported that Beauclerk was robbed of ten thousand pounds, an incident which perhaps shortened his peregrinations. In 1768 he married Lady

Diana Spencer, the eldest daughter of the maliciousness, his merriment and his rea second Duke of Marlborough, who had soning, are now over. Such another will been divorced on his account from her not often be found among mankind. He first husband, Lord Bolingbroke, nephew directed himself to be buried beside his and heir of the great owner of that title. mother, an instance of tenderness which I Johnson was angry and disturbed over the should hardly have expected." To Benaffair. But, as Croker justly comments, net Langton Beauclerk left the care of his he practically waived his personal right of children, in case of Lady Di's death. To criticism by living in the private society his old friend also, among other legacies, of Beauclerk's wife, and had scarcely the he bequeathed Reynolds's fine portrait of option, even at first, of enjoying that and Johnson, in memory of the Oxford days of disparaging her character." Lady Di" when mutual attachment to "The Ramwas certainly fond and faithful to Tophambler ” had first drawn them together. UnBeauclerk. She was an artist of no mean der it he had inscribed, —

66

merit. Horace Walpole built a room for the reception of some of her drawings, which he called his Beauclerk closet; and

Ingenium ingens
Inculto latet hoc sub corpore.

it is to be feared that one invaluable por- Langton thoughtfully effaced the lines. trait of Samuel Johnson has been lost."It was kind of you to take it off," said "Johnson was confined for some days in the burly doctor, with a sigh, and then, the Isle of Skye," writes Topham; "and remembering the antipodal temperament we hear that he was obliged to swim over of the two, "not unkind in him to have it to the main land, taking hold of a cow's put on." tail.... Lady Di has promised to make a drawing of it." Sir Joshua's delightful "Una is the lovely little daughter of Lady Di and Topham Beauclerk, painted the year her father died. The Beauclerks lived in great style, and Lady Dian admirable hostess, had always the warmest welcome for Langton, whom she cordially appreciated, and would rally on his remissness when he stayed away from their home at Richmond. He could reach them so easily, she said; had he but laid himself at length, his feet had been in Lon-its, who brought economy to a science don and his head with them, eodem die!

Beauclerk died on March 11th, 1780. He was forty-one years old, and for all his wit, judgment, and intelligence, left no more trace behind him than that Persian butterfly-elect, Prince Chrysalus, whom old Buxton calls a 66 light phantastick fellow." His air of boyish promise, quite unconscious to himself, had hoodwinked his friends into certain prophecies of his fame. But he took upon himself no yoke and no burden. An allegiance, at any time in his young career, would have made him truly the peer of the noble comrades with whom he walked and jested, and put immortality on his "bright, unbowed, insubmissive head." Yet he was bitterly mourned. "I would have gone to the extremity of the earth to save him!" cried Johnson, who had loved him for twenty years; and again, to Lord Althorpe, "This is a loss, sir, that perhaps the whole nation could not repair." He wrote when his grief had somewhat subsided, “Poor dear Beauclerk! nec, ut soles, dabis joca. His wit and his folly, his acuteness and

After the loss, the doctor consoled himself more than ever with Bennet Langton, and with the atmosphere of love and reverence which surrounded him in Langton's house. He had been, of old, most welcome of all guests at the family seat in Lincolnshire. "Langton, sir," he liked to say, "had a grant of warren from Henry the Second, and Cardinal Stephen Langton, of King John's reign, was of this family." Peregrine Langton, Bennet's uncle, was a man of simple and benevolent hab

without niggardliness, and whom Johnson declared to be one of those he loved at once both by instinct and reason; Bennet's father, however, was the more diverting character. He had a sincere esteem for Johnson, but looked askance on him for his liberal views, and is said to have gone to his grave believing him a secret, deep-dyed, and reprehensible Papist! He once offered the doctor a living of some value in Lincolnshire, if he cared to take orders, a chance gravely refused. Of this learned, exemplary, but rather archaic squire, Johnson said: "Sir, he is so exuberant a talker in public meetings that the gentlemen of his county are afraid of him. No business can be done for his declamation." For him, too, he coined one of his most amazing words; having heard that both Mr. and Mrs. Langton were averse to having their portraits taken, Johnson observed that a superstitious reluctance to sit for one's picture was among the “anfractuosities of the human mind."

Bennet Langton had married on May 24, 1770, Mary Lloyd, widow of John, the