CHAP, vill.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIEST MEMBERS.
Bennet Langton was, in Ms own person, an eminent ires,
example of the high and humane class who are content to Jit. 35.
ring the bell to their Mends. Admiration of the Rambler
made him seek admittance to its author, when he was himself,
some eight years back, but a lad of eighteen; and his inge-
nuous manners and mild enthusiasm at once won Johnson's
argument described to Boswell. " My excellent friend, Dr. Langton, told me, he
" was once present at a dispute between. Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke, on the
" comparative merits of Homer and Virgil, which was carried on with extraordinary
" abilities on both sides. Dr. Johnson maintained the superiority of Homer."
Life, iv. 78. Another argument one would like to have heard on those frequent occa-
sions when Johnson would quote Dryden's lines (of which he was so fond) about living
past years again, and for his part protest that he never lived that week in his life
which he would wish to repeat were an, angel to make the proposal to him.
(Boswett, iii. 139); to which Burke would reply (Boswell does not represent it as
addressed to Johnson, but it obviously must have been), that for his part he
believed that every man "would lead his life over again ; for every man is willing
" to go on and take an addition to his life, which, as he grows older, he has no
" reason to think will be better, or even so good as what has preceded." viii. 304.
A subtle remark, which Johnson might nevertheless have met by simply again
repeating the masterly lines of the old poet, which hit the truth so finely in marking
as an inconsistency, a self-cozenage, what the argument of Burke would bring
within, the control of consistency and reason. " Strange cozenage !" cries the poet,
" When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat,
" Yet, fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit;
" Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay:
" To-morrow's falser than the former day ....
" Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again,
" Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
" And from the dregs of life think to receive
" What the first sprightly running could not give.
<{ I'm tired with waiting for this chemie gold,
" Which fools us young, and beggars us when old."
To which, let me add, if Burke wished to make poetical rejoinder, he had but to
quote the lines of Nourmahal from the same tragedy (Aurung-Zebe),
" 'Tis not for nothing that we life pursue,
" It pays our hopes with something still that's new !"
Scott's Dryden, v. 241.
It is extraordinary how little of Burke's conversation Boswell has attempted to
report. It is chiefly confined to his puns, one or two specimens of which I shall
give hereafter. Meanwhile I close this note with what I have always regarded as
the happiest specimen of that faculty of sudden and familiar illustration which Burke
eminently possessed, and which must have given such a power as well as charm to
his conversation. Boswell happened to remark to him that he thought Croft's Life