OLIVEE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1763. Perhaps it was ominous of the mischances attending this
-ZEtTis. pension, that it was entered in the name of " William Birt: "
the name which was soon to he so famous, having little fami-
liarity or fame as yet. The notion of the club delighted Burke;
and he asked admission for his father-in-law, Doctor Nugent,
an accomplished Bornan Catholic physician, who lived with
him. Beauclerc in Eke manner suggested his friend Chamier,
then secretary in the war-office.* Oliver Goldsmith completed
the numher. But another member of the original Ivy-lane
society, Samuel Dyer,f making unexpected appearance from
abroad in the following year, was joyfully admitted; and
though it was resolved to make election difficult, and only for
special reasons permit addition to their number,! the limita-
tion at first proposed was thus of course done away with. A
second limitation, however, to the number of twelve, was
definitively made on the occasion of the second balloting, and
will be duly described. The place of meeting was the Turk's-
head tavern in Grerrard-street Soho, § where, the chair being
* Chamier was not appointed under-secretary till 1775. In the account of the
club there may still be one or two slight inaccuracies, though I have been at some
pains to obtain correct information since my last edition. Obvious errors, indeed,
exist in every description of this celebrated society, from tlie first supplied by
Malone to the last furnished by Mr. Hatchett.
*h For an interesting account of this remarkable man, see Malone's Life of
Dryden, 181-5 (note.)
J It was intended, according to Malone (Account of Reynolds, Ixxxiii), that the
club should consist of such men as that if only two of them chanced to meet they
should be able to entertain each other sufficiently, without wishing for more
company with whom to pass an evening. "This," writes Percy to Boswell (Nichols's
Illustrations, vii. 311), '' I have heard Johnson mention as the principal or avowed
" reason for the small number of members to which for many years it was
" limited." And so far Johnson was right in holding that the club's adversity
did not arrive till the numbers were large, and the members not very select; nor
is it easy to imagine that Lord Liverpool, in comparatively recent days, when he
found himself on one occasion sol/us at the dinner, was able to entertain himself
sufficiently without wishing for more company. The men are few indeed who can
afford to have "nobody with them at sea but" themselves.
§ Here the club remained as long as Goldsmith lived, and until 1783, when the
landlord died, and the hotel became a private house. Meanwhile the predo-