m, and by the asthmatic
gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally
ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to sit down to his
desk prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment orally. To
discuss questions of taste, of learning, casuistry, in language so exact
and so forcible that it might have been printed without the alteration
of a word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as he
said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was ready to bestow the
overflowings of his full mind on anybody who would start a subject, on a
fellow-passenger in a stage coach, or on the person who sate at the same
table with him in an eating-house. But his conversation was nowhere so
brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded by a few friends, whose
abilities and knowledge enabled them, as he once expressed it, to
send him back every ball that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed
themselves into a club, which gradually became a formidable power in the
commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this conclave on new
books were speedily known over all London, and were sufficient to sell
off a whole edition in a day, or to condemn the sheets to the service
of the trunk-maker and the pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange
when we consider what great and various talents and acquirements met in
the little fraternity. Goldsmith was the representative of poetry and
light literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political eloquence and
political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian,
and Jones, the greatest linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to the
meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his
consummate knowledge of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants
were two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound together
by friendship, but of widely different characters and habits; Bennet
Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek literature, by the
orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity of his life; and Topham
Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his knowledge of the gay world,
his fastidious taste, and his sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a
society was not easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated.
Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which others were
under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, though not generally a
very patient listener, was content to ta