CHAP, viii.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS.
out Lord Lansdowne's drinking song over a bowl of bishop ; 1763.
had taken a boat with them and rowed to Billingsgate; and Mt, 35.
(according to Boswell) had resolved, with Beauclere, " to
" persevere in dissipation for the rest of the day," when
Langton pleaded an engagement to breakfast with some
young ladies, and was scolded by Johnson for leaving social
friends to go and sit with a set of wretched un-idea'd girls.
" And as for Garrick, sir," said the sage, when his fright was
reported to him, " he durst not do such a thing. His wife
" would not let him! "* It was on hearing of similar proposed
extravagances, soon after, that Beauclerc's mother angrily
rebuked Johnson himself, and told him an old man
should not put such things in young people's heads;
but the frisking philosopher had as little respect for
Lady Sydney's anger as for Garriek's decorous alarm.
"She had no notion of a joke, sir," he said; "had
" corne late into life, and had a mighty unpliable under-
" standing! " t
The taste for un-idea'd girls-was not laughed out of Langton,
nevertheless; and to none did his gentle domesticities
become dearer than to Johnson. He left Oxford with a first-
rate knowledge of Greek, and, what is of rarer growth at
Oxford, with untiring and all-embracing tolerance. His
manners endeared him to men from whom, he differed most;
he listened even better than he talked; and there is no figure
at this, memorable club more pleasing, none that takes kinder
up Johnson, and see if they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. They
rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared
in his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap,
and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to
attack him. "When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he
'' smiled, and with great good-humour agreed to their proposal: ' What, is it you,
" 'you dogs ! I'll have a frisk with you.'" Boswell, i. 298.
* Bomudl, i. 299. t Ibid, v. 24.