he _Dictionary_. Yet he and most members of that
club, apart from the record of Boswell, would be but names to the
literary antiquary, and be by the mass of readers entirely forgotten.

He had canvassed the members. Johnson wrote, on April 23rd, to
Goldsmith, who was in the chair that evening, to consider Boswell as
proposed by himself in his absence. On the night of the ballot, April
30th, Boswell dined at Beauclerk's, where, after the company had gone to
the club, he was left till the fate of his election should be announced.
After Johnson had taken the thing in hand there was not much danger, yet
poor Bozzy 'sat in a state of anxiety which even the charming
conversation of Lady Di Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate.' There
he received the tidings of his election, and he hastened to the place of
meeting. Burke he met that night for the first time, and on his
entrance, Johnson, 'with humorous formality, gave me a _charge_,
pointing out the conduct expected from me as a good member of the club.'
That charge we can believe Forster to be right in suspecting to be a
caution against publishing abroad the proceedings and the talk of the
members.

In the autumn of the year, as they drew near to Monboddo, Johnson, we
should think with excessive rudeness, told him 'several of the members
wished to keep you out. Burke told me, he doubted if you were fit for
it: but, now you are in, none of them are sorry. Burke says, that you
have so much good humour naturally, it is scarce a virtue.' The faithful
Bozzy replied, 'They were afraid of you, sir, as it was you who proposed
me;' and the doctor was prone to admit that if the one blackball
necessary to exclude had been given, they knew they never would have got
in another member. Yet even from this rebuff he managed to deftly
extract a compliment. Beauclerk, the doctor said, had been very earnest
for the admission, and Beauclerk, replied Boswell, 'has a keenness of
mind which is very uncommon.' The witty Topham, along with Reynolds,
Garrick, and others, is immortalized in the pages of the man who was not
thought by the wits of Gerrard Street fit for their club.

[A] By the Town Clerk Depute of Glasgow, R. Renwick,
Esq., we are informed that no notice of this enrolment of
General Paoli was entered at the time, pursuant to the custom of
the Register over honorary burgesships.

CHAPTER V

TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES. 1773

'Breaking the silence of the seas