This celebrated gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded by Johnson
himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the Helicon of London
Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker of his age had built
for himself, and in which he took care to be duly worshipped. It met at
the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, every Friday; and from seven in
the evening to almost any hour of night was the scene of such talk,
mainly on literature and learning, as has never been heard since in this
country. It consisted at this period of twenty-six members, and there is
scarcely one among them whose name is not known to-day as well as any in
the history of our literature. Besides the high priests, Reynolds and
Johnson, there came Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and many another of
less note, to represent the senate: Goldsmith, Gibbon, Adam Smith,
Malone, Dr. Burney, Percy, Nugent, Sir William Jones, three Irish
bishops, and a host of others, crowded in from the ranks of learning and
literature. Garrick and George Colman found here an indulgent audience;
and the light portion of the company comprised such men as Topham
Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Vesey, and a dozen of lords and baronets. In
short, they were picked men, and if their conversation was not always
witty, it was because they had all wit and frightened one another.

[Illustration: THE FAMOUS LITERARY CLUB.]

Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grumpiness; scolded,
dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshawed; and made himself generally
disagreeable; yet, hail the omen, Intellect! such was the force, such
the fame of his mind, that the more he snorted, the more they adored
him--the more he bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. He was
quite 'His Majesty' at the Turk's Head, and the courtiers waited for his
coming with anxiety, and talked of him till he came in the same manner
as the lacqueys in the anteroom of a crowned monarch. Boswell, who, by