Bennet Langton.

Ir is not the portrait of Johnson only that Boswell has drawn for us. Το most men Garrick and Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and even Goldsmith are known only so far as they appear in the pages of the Life. Great though these men were, no one of them was so fortunate as to find an artist so skilled in painting him, that his likeness, though made the very centre of the picture, stands out to us half so clear as it shows when given in the very background of Boswell's wide canvas. By the side of their great figures are sketched in, with no weaker a hand, a host of lesser men. Had he not written, their very names would long ago have passed away, but now the men themselves live for us. The thought arises, not what they, but what we should have lost if they had missed their rates sacer. It is the living, not the dead who are to be pitied when the good of a bygone age are left overwhelmed and unknown in the long night of which the Latin poet sings. What reader of Boswell does not almost feel that he would have had one friend less in the world had he never had his delightful pages to teach him the worth of the gentle Bennet Langton? Dear to us as are so many of the men who loved Johnson and whom Johnson loved, dear to us as is Goldsmith, dear to us as is the dear Knight of Plympton' himself, certainly not less dear is the tall Lincolnshire squire who, as a mere lad, came to London chiefly in the hope of getting introduced to the author of the Rambler, and who, more than thirty years later, came up once more to tend his friend when the grand old man knew at last that that death which he had so long dreaded from afar was now close upon him and must be faced. Their long friendship had been but once broken. Happily, ten years or so before it was broken for ever it had been made whole again.

Boswell himself does not describe Bennet Langton's person, nor could he well have done so, as Langton was living when the Life was published. Miss Hawkins, however, in her Memoirs has happily supplied the deficiency. She says, "Oh! that we could sketch him with his mild countenance, his elegant features, and his sweet smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other as if fearing to occupy more space than was equitable; his person inclining forward, as if wanting strength to support his height, and his arms crossed over his bosom, or his hands locked together on his knee; his oblong gold-mounted snuff-box, taken from the waistcoat pocket opposite his hand, and either remaining between his fingers or set by him on the table, but which was never used but when his mind was occupied in conversation; so soon as conversation began the box was produced." We find another description of him given by Mr. Best, in his Personal and Literary Memorials:-"He was a very tall, meagre, long-visaged

man, much resembling a stork standing on one leg near the shore, in Raphael's cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. His manners were, in the highest degree, polished; his conversation mild, agreeable, and always pleasing." Johnson, in a letter to Langton's tutor at Trinity College, Oxford, thus pleasantly alludes to his great height: "I see your pupil sometimes; his mind is as exalted as his stature. I am half afraid of him; but he is no less amiable than formidable." The nickname of

Lanky that he gave him was, no doubt, not merely, like Sherry or Goldy, an abbreviation of a name; it was also a hit át his friend's person. Topham Beauclerk's wife also had her fling at his height. In Boswelliana we read, "Lady Di Beauclerk told me that Langton had never been to see her since she came to Richmond, his head was so full of the militia and Greek. Why,' said J, 'madam, he is of such a length; he is awkward, and not easily moved.' 'But,' said she, if he had laid himself at his length, his feet had been in London and his head might have been here eodem die."" His sons were not unworthy of their father, and 66 used," as we read in Miss Hawkins' Memoirs, "to amuse the good people of Paris by raising their arms to let them pass."

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"Johnson," as Boswell tells us, was not the less ready to love Mr. Langton for his being of a very ancient family; for I have heard him say with pleasure, Langton, Sir, has a grant of a warren from Henry II., and Cardinal Stephen Langton in King John's reign was of this family.' " His grandfather had known Lord Chief Justice Hale, and had kept a note of a conversation in which "that great man told him that for two years after he came to the Inn of Court he studied sixteen hours a day; however, by this intense application he almost brought himself to his grave, though he were of a very strong constitution, and after reduced himself to eight hours." His father, His father, "old Mr. Langton, was a high and steady Tory, yet attached to the present Royal Family. Johnson said of him, Sir, you will seldom see such a gentleman, such are his stores of literature, such his knowledge in divinity, and such his exemplary life; and, Sir, he has no grimace, no gesticulation, no bursts of admiration on trivial occasions; he never embraces you with an overacted cordiality." Yet at another time he said of him, "He never clarified his notions by filtrating them through other minds. He had a canal upon his estate, where at one place the bank was too low. 'I dug the canal deeper, said he.' The word canal, in Johnson's time, we may remark, was generally applied to an ornamental sheet of water. Old Mr. and Mrs. Langton had both opposed sitting for their pictures. When Johnson, who thought it right that each generation of a family should have its portraits taken, heard of this, he exclaimed, "Sir, among the anfractuosities of the human mind, I know not if it may not be one, that there is a superstitious reluctance to sit for a picture." The old gentleman, though later on he suspected that Johnson was at heart a Papist, had offered him a living of considerable value in Lincolnshire if he were inclined to take orders. Happily for the world, perhaps not unhappily for the parish, Johnson declined. Of Peregrine

Langton, Bennet's uncle, who Johnson says "was one of those whom I loved at once by instinct and by reason," and of his admirable economy, we have an interesting account from the pen of the nephew himself. "He had an annuity for life of 2001. per annum. His family consisted of a sister, who paid him 181. annually for her board, and a niece. The servants were two maids, and two men in livery. His common way of living at his table was three or four dishes; the appurtenances to his table were neat and handsome; he frequently entertained company at dinner, and then his table was well served with as many dishes as were usual at the tables of the other gentlemen in the neighbourhood. His own appearance as to clothes was genteelly neat and plain. He had always a post-chaise, and kept three horses. Some money he put into the stocks; at his death the sum he had there amounted to 150l." "His art of life certainly deserves to be known and studied as much now as when Johnson wrote.

Such was the family of the tall Lincolnshire lad who, at the age of seventeen or thereabouts, full of admiration for the Rambler, which had just been brought to an end, eagerly sought an introduction to its author. He by good luck made the acquaintance of Robert Levett," the practiser in physic," the man "obscurely wise and coarsely kind," who introduced him to Johnson. "Mr. Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner. From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent, well-dressed, in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down from his bed-chamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so congenial with those in which Mr. Langton had been educated, that he conceived for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved." Johnson took no less pleasure in Langton's company. He described him as one of those men "to whom Nature does not spread her volumes or utter her voices in vain," "as a friend at once cheerful and serious," while rising yet higher, "with a warm vehemence of affectionate regard, he exclaimed, The earth does not bear a worthier man then Bennet Langton.'" On another occasion he said, "I know not who will go to Heaven if Langton does not. Sir, I could almost say, Sit anima mea cum Langtono."

6

Miss Reynolds, in her Anecdotes, tells us, "I shall never forget the excellent character he drew of his friend Mr. Langton, nor with what energy, what fond delight, he expatiated in his praise, giving him every excellence that nature could bestow, and every perfection that humanity could acquire." Boswell, too, describes "our worthy friend,"—for that is Langton's Homeric epithet in the modern Odyssey-as "a gentleman eminent not only for worth and learning, but for an inexhaustible fund of entertaining conversation."

In a note to the Life he quotes one of his stories. "An honest carpenter," we read, "after giving some anecdote in Langton's presence of the ill-treatment which he had received from a clergyman's wife, who was a noted termagant, and whom he accused of unjust dealing in some transaction with him, added, 'I took care to let her know what I thought of her; and being asked, 'What did you say?' answered, I told her she was a scoundrel. In Boswelliana we find recorded two or three anecdotes that Langton told of Johnson that Boswell has not we believe worked up into the Life. "A certain young clergyman," we read, "used to come about Dr. Johnson. The Doctor said it vexed him to be in his company-his ignorance was so hopeless. Sir,' said Mr. Langton, his coming about you shows he wishes to help his ignorance.' 'Sir,' said the Doctor, his ignorance is so great I am afraid to show him the bottom of it.'" Langton also told Boswell how "Mr. Johnson used to laugh at a passage in Carte's Life of the Duke of Ormond," where he gravely observes, "that he was always in full dress when he went to court; too many being in the practice of going thither with double lapells." To Langton, Johnson had once said, "Sir, had Wilkes's mob prevailed against Government, this nation had died of phthiriasis." Boswell suggests that morbus pediculosus as being better known, would strike more, and adds lousy disease may be put in a parenthesis. Johnson, when insisting one day "that the value of every story depends on its being true," said, "Langton used to think a story a story, till I showed him that truth was essential to it."

He was endeared to Johnson by his Greek scarcely less than by his ancient lineage, his piety, his entertaining conversation, and his worth. He was the man who had read Clenardus's Greek Grammar. "Why, Sir," said Johnson," who is there in this town who knows anything of Clenardus but you and I?" He had learnt by heart the Epistle of St. Basil. "Sir," said Johnson, "I never made such an effort to attain Greek." It was at his house that Johnson spent an evening with the Rev. Dr. Parr, when" he was much pleased with the conversation of that learned gentleman." "He has invited," so Johnson writes to Boswell," Nicolaida, the learned Greek, to visit him at his house in Lincolnshire." When he gets somewhat embarrassed in his circumstances, Johnson, though close on the end of his life, and nigh worn out with illness, writes to him, "I am a little angry at you for not keeping minutes of your own acceptum et expensum, and think a little time might be spared from Aristophanes for the res familiares." To him Johnson, now on his death-bed, gave the translations into Latin verse that he had made of Greek epigrams during the sleepless nights of his last illness. His name is not to be found to the celebrated round robin which Burke drew up, and that the company gathered round Sir Joshua Reynolds's table signed. "Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, might be such a fool" as to put his hand to a petition that Goldsmith's epitaph should be not in Latin, but in English ; but "Mr. Langton, like a sturdy scholar, refused to sign it." In Miss

Hawkins' Memoirs we read how "he would get into the most fluent recitation of half a page of Greek, breaking off for fear of wearying, by saying, as I well remember was his phrase, and so it goes on;' accompanying his words with a gentle wave of his hand, indicating that you might better suppose the rest than bear his proceeding." He could nevertheless enjoy a liberty taken with his beloved Greek, and one evening as Boswell writes, "made us laugh heartily at some lines by Joshua Barnes in which are to be found such comical Anglo-Ellenisms as kλúßßoiσiv ěßavxler, they were banged with clubs." Mr. Best has given an account of an evening that he once spent in his company. "In the course of conversation he took out a small pocket-album, containing bon-mots, or heads and notices of bon-mots, which he filled out and commented upon in a most amusing manner. Among other witticisms was a short copy of macaronic Greek verses, of which I remember 'five-poundon elendeto, ah! mala simplos.'' He was no unfit successor to his great friend in the Professorship of Ancient Literature in the Royal Academy.

Johnson had taken him in the early days of their friendship to see Richardson, who had little conversation except about his own works. "Johnson," says Langton, "professed that he could bring him out into conversation, and used this allusive expression, Sir, I can make him rear.' But he failed; for in that interview Richardson said little else than that there lay in the room a translation of his Clarissa into German." He had also visited Young, who told him when they were walking in the garden, "Here I had put a handsome sun-dial, with this inscription, Eheu fugaces! which (speaking with a smile) was sadly verified, for by the next morning my dial had been carried off." "Young," he remarked, "showed a degree of curiosity concerning the common occurrences that were then passing, which appeared somewhat remarkable in a man of such intellectual stores, of such an advanced age, and who had retired from life with declared disappointment in his expectations." He was intimate indeed with most of the men of letters of his time, but it was in Johnson's house" at his levee of morning visitors, when he was declaiming over his tea, which he drank very plentifully," that he was mostly to be found. Langton, early in their acquaintance, had invited Johnson to visit his father's house at Spilsby, but he wrote in reply that much as he would have liked to have gone, nevertheless he must forbear the pleasure. "I will give the true reason," he writes, "which I know you will approve :— I have a mother more than eighty years old, who has counted the days to the publication of my book (his Dictionary) in hopes of seeing me; and to her, if I can disengage myself here, I resolve to go." A year or two later on he again writes to him, "I go on, as I formerly did, designing to be some time or other both rich and wise; and yet cultivate neither mind nor fortune. Do you take notice of my example and learn the danger of delay. When I was as you are now, towering in confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine what I now am. you do not seem to need my admonition. You are busy in acquiring and

But