onversation whose wit
seems to be spontaneous, and whose anecdotes, however _recherche_, seem to
flow from the subject. "Every thing," remarked Johnson, "comes from
Beauclerk so easily, that it appears to me that I labour when I say a good
thing."

Beauclerk was the only son of Lord Sydney Beauclerk, a son of Charles,
first Duke of St Albans. He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and,
from the moment of his entering fashionable life, was remarked for the
elegance of manner, and the liveliness of conversation, which continued to
be his distinctions to the close of his career. Unfortunately, the fashion
of the time not only allowed, but seems to have almost required, an
irregularity of life which would tarnish the character of any man in our
more decorous day. His unfortunate intercourse with Viscountess
Bolingbroke, better known by her subsequent name of Lady Diana Beauclerk,
produced a divorce, and in two days after a marriage. She was the eldest
daughter of Charles, the second Duke of Marlborough, and was in early life
as distinguished for her beauty, as in later years she was for her wit.

Johnson in his old age became acquainted with Topham Beauclerk, through
their common friend, Langton, and even the sage and moralist acknowledged
the captivation of his manners. "What a coalition!" said Garrick, when he
heard of their acquaintance, "I shall have my old friend to bail out of
the roundhouse." But whatever might be the elegance of his companion's
laxity, Johnson did not hesitate to rebuke him. Beauclerk, like wits in
general, had a propensity to satire, on which Johnson once took him to
task in this rough style--"You never open your mouth but with the
intention to give pain; and you have now given me pain, not from the power
of what you have said, but from my seeing the intention." At another tine,
applying to him that line of Pope's, slightly altered, he said--

'Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools;'

everything you do shows the one, and every thing you say the other."

Another rather less intelligible rebuke occurred in his saying, "Thy body
is all vice and thy mind all virtue." As the actions of the body proceed
from the mind, it is difficult to conceive how the one can be impure
without the other. At least Beauclerk did not appear to relish the
distinction, and he was angry at the phrase. However, Johnson's attempt to
appease him was a curious specimen of his magniloquence. "Nay, sir,
Alexander th