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Johnson's Club-room


In a paper in the Edinburgh Review, we find this cabinet picture:--The

club-room is before us, and the table, on which stands the omelet for

Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads

which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles

of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of

Beauclerc, and the beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his snuff-box,

nd Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that

strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among

whom we have been brought up--the gigantic body, the huge massy face,

seamed with the scars of disease; the brown coat, the black worsted

stockings, the grey wig, with the scorched foretop; the dirty hands, the

nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and nose moving with

convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing;

and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No,

sir!" and the "You don't see your way through the question, sir!"



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