list of members in these early years included many illustrious names, Burke, Goldsmith, Langton, Bishop Percy, Windham, Fox, Dr. Burney, Sir William Jones, Edward Malone, Gibbon, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Robert Chambers, Mr. Dunning, first Lord Ashburton, Lord Ossory, and many others distinguished in public life. The members in later times have been not less illustrious, as it has been an object of ambition to be enrolled in a society so famed in history.

Dr. Johnson was eminently "a clubable man," delighting in such gatherings, where intellectual recreation, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul" formed the chief attraction. Personally he was extremely temperate; in fact, through most of his life he was a total abstainer from alcoholic drink; a habit acquired, he tells us, partly from regard to health, and partly on moral grounds, as he found it easier and safer to abstain entirely from wine than to be a moder

ate drinker. He took no vow, but he set a good example at a time when excessive drinking was thought no moral or social disgrace. There seems to have been no smoking at the club, the use of tobacco at this time having gone much out of fashion, and not becoming again prevalent till a later period.

We are not dependent on Boswell alone, who was a regular attendant when in London, for the record of Johnson's table talk at the club. Dr. Percy, Sir John Hawkins, Reynolds, Malone, and other members have left valuable recollections of what was done and said at the meetings. From these various sources we can form a good idea of the conversational powers of Johnson, on which his fame so largely rests. Some specimens of his table talk form the substance of the present centenary memorial, but to those of a new generation who are not familiar with Johnson's history a brief reference to his life and works may be acceptable.

T

O the events of his early years it is not necessary to devote

much space.

Born at Lich

In

field, September 18, 1709; he received his first education at Lichfield school, and at the grammar-school of Stonebridge, in Worcestershire. 1728 he entered as a fellow-commoner at Pembroke College, Oxford; but his university career was cut short in less than three years, by the failure of his father, Michael Johnson, the Lichfield

bookseller.

After an unsuccessful attempt to establish a school, and having assisted Mr. Warren, a bookseller in Birmingham, where his schoolfellow Mr. Hector had settled as a surgeon, Johnson resolved to devote himself to literature as his calling. He offered his services to Mr. Cave, who had started the "Gentleman's Magazine " a few years before, and with whom he had some correspondence while at Birmingham.

His marriage with Mrs. Porter delayed a purpose he had formed to migrate to London, and he made a second attempt to support himself as a schoolmaster. The school did not succeed, for lack of pupils, only three being attracted by his advertisements, two of them being David Garrick and his brother George, their father Captain Garrick residing in Lichfield.

The resolution to seek his fortune in London was then firmly formed. His pupil, David Garrick, determined to

accompany him, professedly to study law, but already with ambition to enter on a dramatic career. The two adventurers started for London in 1737. In after life, when both had risen to eminence, they used playfully to recall the time of early struggle, not omitting the day when they left Lichfield, as they afterwards used to say, "with a few pence in their pockets." Garrick had a career of steady prosperity, and soon became rich as well as famous. Johnson's poverty continued for many years, and the record of his toils and hardships as a man of letters is altogether a sad and painful story. He had experience to the utmost of the drudgery of writing for bread. For the booksellers. he wrote reviews, prefaces, biographies, essays, and miscellaneous pieces, in prose and verse, for very small remuneration. For a time he assisted Guthrie, Cave's principal literary hack, in preparing the parliamentary debates for the "Gentleman's Magazine," and