club. Nor was there lack in him of literary qualities; his prologues were of the best, and he had the charming art of listening provocatively when the great doctor expounded.

Mr. Boswell.

Another early member of the club, whom I think we should have liked to see making his way with a very assured step into the Turk's Head, of a Monday or a Friday, was James Boswell, Esquire.* It is a household name now, and will remain so for years to come by reason of the extraordinary life which he wrote, of his master and patron, Dr. Johnson. Yet it was only a year or so before the formation of the club that this jaunty Scotch gentleman, son of a laird, and of vast assurance having been a tuft-hunter from his youth-caught his first sight of the great Doctor, in the little shop of Davies the bookseller; and the great man had given a snubbing, then and there, to the pert, but always obsequious Boswell; the future biographer, however, digested

*B. 1740; d. 1795.

excellently well provision of that sort, and I think the Doctor had always a tenderness for those who took his flagellations without complaint. Certain it is that there grew up thereafter an intimacy between the two, which is one of the most curious things in the history of English Men of Letters. I know that hard things are said of Mr. Boswell, and that every tyro in criticism loves to have a blow at the well-fed arrogance of the man. Macaulay has specially given him a grievous black-eye; but Macaulay — particularly in those early review papers-was apt to let his exuberant and cumulative rhetoric carry him up to a climacteric which the ladder of his facts would scantly reach. To be sure Boswell was a toady; but rather from veneration of those he worshipped than desire of personal advancement; he was an arrant tuft-hunter, thereby enlarging the sphere of his observations; but he was fairly up in classical studies; had large fund of information; was sufficiently well-bred (indeed, in contrast with the Doctor, I think we may say excellently well-bred); he rarely, if ever, said malicious things, though often impertinent ones;

his conundrums again and again gave a new turn to dull talk; and he had a way, which some even more stolid people possess in our time, of baiting conversation by interposing irrelevant matter, with an air of innocence that captivates; then there was the pleasant conceit of the man full-fed, sleek, and shining out all over him — over his face, and his erect but somewhat paunchy figure; all which qualities were contributory to the humor and fulness and charm of that famous biography which we can read backward or forward — in the morning or at night - by the chapter or by the page with our pipe or with

out it with our knitting or without it and always with an amazed and delighted sense that the dear, old, clumsy, gray-stockinged, snuff-ridden Doctor has come to life once more, and is toddling along our streets, belching out his wit and wrath, and leaning on the arm of the everready and most excellent and obsequious James Boswell, Esquire.

Such a book is not to be sneered at, nor the writer of it; perhaps we think it would be easy for us or anybody to write such another, if we

would only forget conventionalisms and have the courage of our impressions; but if we made trial, I daresay we should find that to forget conventionalisms is just what we can't and do not know how to do; and so our impressions get bundled into the swathings of an ambitious rhetoric which spoils our chances and vulgarizes effort. I do not say Boswell was a very high-toned man or a very capable man in most directions; but he did. have the art of easy narrative to a most uncommon degree; and did clearly perceive and apprehend just those points and qualities which go to make portraiture complete and satisfying.* do not believe that he stupidly blundered into doing his biographic work well; stupid blunder

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*There is, to be sure, a great deal of what the natural reserve of most men would lead them to withhold. But if this 'free-telling" does add some of the finer lights and most artistic touches to his picture, and if he perceives this to be so (and have we any right to assume the contrary ?) shall we not credit it rightly to his book-making art and commend it accordingly?

That his gentlemanly reserves are not of a pronounced sort may count against the delicacy of his nature, but not necessarily against his capacity as a literary artist.

ing never did and never could accomplish work that will meet acceptance by the intelligence of the world.

Gibbon.

I come now to speak of a more respectable personage one of whom you have often heard, and whose resounding periods, full of Roman History you will most surely have read; I mean Edward Gibbon *—not an original member of the club, but elected at an early day. His life has great interest. He was the sole survivor of seven children; his father being a Member of Parliament There

- very reputable, but very inefficient.

were fears that his famous son would be a cripple for life, so weakly was he, and so ill put together; but growing stronger, he went to Oxford; was there for only a short time; did not love Oxford

* Edward Gibbon, b. 1737; d. 1794. Dr. Milman's is the standard edition of his History. Bowdler's edition (1825) is noticeable for its expurgations. The work, through its translations, holds as large a place in the historic curriculum of French, Italian, and German students, as in that of English-speaking nations.