Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/247

 Anecdotes.

��and break his arm, in which condition his companions left him to call Mr. Johnson, who relating the series of his tragicomical distresses, obtained from the Literary Club x a seasonable relief 2 ,

Of that respectable society I have heard him speak in the highest terms, and with a magnificent panegyric on each mem ber, when it consisted only of a dozen or fourteen friends 3 ; but as soon as the necessity of enlarging it brought in new faces, and took off from his confidence in the company, he grew less fond of the meeting, and loudly proclaimed his carelessness ivho might be admitted, when it was become a mere dmner club 4.

��1 Steevens, in the Gent. Mag. for 1785, P. 98, under the signature of Aldebaran (see Nichols's Lit. Hist. v. 443) says: ' Since Mr. Garrick's funeral this association has been called (what I am told it has never called itself) THE LITERARY CLUB.' Boswell apparently was pleased with the name. Life, i. 477 ; iv. 326 ; v. 109, >*. 5.

Literary is not in Johnson's Dic tionary.

2 Mrs. Piozzi says this man was Joseph Simpson. Hayvvard's Piozzi, ii. 84. According to the account given of Simpson by Murphy, he was 'a schoolfellow of Dr. Johnson's, a barrister, of good parts, but who fell into a dissipated course of life. . . . Yet he still preserved a dignity in his deportment.' Life, iii. 28. See ib. i. 346 for Johnson's letter to him about his father's inexorability on his marriage.

3 See ib. v. 108, where he and Boswell filled the chairs of an im aginary 'very capital University' with members of their Club.

4 He wrote to Boswell on March 1 1, 1777 : ' It is proposed to augment our club from twenty to thirty, of which I am glad ; for as we have several in it whom I do not much

��like to consort with, I am for re ducing it to a mere miscellaneous collection of conspicuous men, with out any determinate character.' Ib. iii. 106.

Malone, writing about his attempt to get into the Literary club, says : ' I am not quite so anxious as Agmondesham Vesey was, who, I am told, had couriers stationed to bring him the quickest intelligence of his success.' Hist. MSS. Com. Twelfth Report, x. App. 344. Vesey was elected on April 2, 1773. Cro- ker's Boswell, ed. 1844, ii. 326.

Reynolds wrote to Bishop Percy on Feb. 12, 1783 : 'The Club seems to flourish this year; we have had Mr. Fox, Burke and Johnson very often. I mention those because they are, or have been, the greatest truants.' Nichols's Lit. Hist. viii. 205,

Macaulay wrote on March 20, 1839 : ' I have this instant a note from Lord Lansdowne, who was in the chair of the Club yesterday night, to say that I am unanimously elected.' On April 9 he entered in his Diary : ' I went to the Thatched House, and was well pleased to meet the Club for the first time. ... I was amused, in turning over the records of the Club, to come upon poor Bozzy's I think

�� �