CHAPTER VIII.

THE CLUB AND ITS FIEST MEMBERS.

1763.
THE association of celebrated men of this period univer- ,„„„

x 1763,

sally known as the Literary Club, did not receive that
name till many years after it was formed and founded; but
that Reynolds was its Romulus (so Mrs. Thrale said Johnson
called him),* and this year of 1763 the year of its foundation,
is unquestionable : though the meetings did not begin till
winter. Johnson caught at the notion eagerly; suggested as
its model a club he had himself founded-in Ivy-lane some
fourteen years before, and which the deaths or dispersion of
its members had now interrupted for nearly seven years;
and on this suggestion being adopted, the members, as in
the earlier club, were limited to nine, and Mr. Hawkins,, as
an original member of the Ivy-lane, was invited to join.
Topham Beauclerc and Bennet Langton were also asked, and
welcomed earnestly; and, of course, Mr. Edmund Burke. He
had lately left Dublin and politics for a time, and returned to
literature in Queen-Anne-street; where a solid mark of liis
patron Hamilton's satisfaction had accompanied him, in
shape of a pension on the Irish Establishment of £300 a year.

* Anecdotes, 122. "Or said somebody else of the company called him so,
"' which was more likely."eady help and robust