of strange oblivion had overspread him, so that
he did not know what was become of the past year, and that incidents and
intelligence passed over him without leaving any impression.

Neither change of place nor the society of friends availed to prevent or
to dissipate this melancholy. In 1762, he made an excursion into
Devonshire, with Sir Joshua Reynolds; the next year he went to Harwich,
with Boswell; in the following, when his malady was most troublesome,
the meeting which acquired the name of the Literary Club was instituted,
and he passed a considerable time in Lincolnshire, with the father of
Langton; and, in the year after, visited Cambridge, in the company of
Beauclerk. Of the Literary Club, first proposed by Reynolds, the other
members at its first establishment were Burke, Dr. Nugent, Beauclerk,
Langton, Goldsmith, Chamier, and Sir John Hawkins. They met at the
Turk's Head, in Gerrard-street, Soho, one evening in the week, and
usually remained together till a late hour. The society was afterwards
extended, so as to comprise a large number of those who were most
eminent, either for their learning or their station in life, and the
place of meeting has been since at different times changed to other
parts of the town, nearer to the Parliament House, or to the usual
resorts of gaiety. A club was the delight of Johnson. We lose some of
our awe for him, when we contemplate him as mimicked by his old scholar
Garrick, in the act of squeezing a lemon into the punch-bowl, and
asking, as he looks round the company, in his provincial accent, of
which he never got entirely rid, "Who's for _poonch_?" If there was any
thing likely to gratify him more than a new club, it was the public
testimony of respect from a learned body; and this he received from
Trinity College, Dublin, in a diploma for the degree of Doctor of Laws,
an honour the more flattering, as it came without solicitation.

At the beginning of 1766, his faithful biographer, James Boswell, who
had known him for three years, found him in a good house in Johnson's
court, Fleet-street, to which he had removed from lodgings in the
Temple. By the advice of his physician, he had now begun to abstain from
wine, and drank only water or lemonade. He had brought two companions
into his new dwelling, such as few other men would have chosen to
enliven their solitude. On the ground floor was Miss Anna Williams,
daughter of Zechariah Williams, a man who had practised physic in