CHAP. Vlli.j THE CLUB AND ITS PIEST MEMBEBS.

at the Turk's-head, and the glittering loungers in St. 1763.
James's-street, he was the solitary link of connexion; and B&. 35.
with George Selwyn at White's, or at Strawberry-hill with
"Walpole, was as much at home as with Johnson in Gerrard-
street. It gave him an influence, a sort of secret charm,
among these lettered companions, which Johnson him self very
frankly confessed to. " Beauclerc could take more liberty
" with him," says Bos well, " than anybody with whom I ever
" saw him;" and when his friends were studying stately
congratulations on his pension, and Beau simply hoped,
with Falstaff, that he'd in future purge and live cleanly
like a gentleman, he laughed at the advice and took it.*
Such, indeed, was the effect upon him of that kind of accom-
plishment in which he felt himself deficient, that he more
than once instanced Beauclerc's talents as those which he
was more disposed to envy than those of any whom he had
known.t

A peculiarity in Beauclerc's conversation seems undoubt-
edly and half unconsciously, to have impressed every one.
Boswell tries to describe it by assigning to it " that air of
" the world which has I know not what impressive effect, as
" if there were something more than is expressed, or than

a portrait of Johnson, which now became Langton's property, and on the frame of
which had been inscribed by Beauclerc, "Ingenium ingens inculto latet hoc sub
" corpore :" which inscription Langton caused to be defaced. " It was kind in you
" to take it off," said Johnson to him, complacently ; and then, after a short pause,
with a manly kindness and delicacy of feeling, he added, "and not unkind in him to
" put it on." He was much affected by Beauclerc's direction in his will, that he
should be buried by the side of his mother. Boswell, vii. 310-11.

* Boswell, i. 298. Johnson was some time with Beauclerk at his house at
Windsor, where he was entertained with experiments in natural philosophy.
One Sunday, when the weather was Teryfine, Beauclerk enticed him, insensibly,
to saunter about all the morning. They went into a churchyard, in the time of
divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of the tomb-
stones. " Now, sir (said Beauclerc), you are like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice."

f Ibid, vii. 321.ion, drive out