performing a painful operation, and shortly before his death inflicted
such wounds upon himself in hopes of obtaining relief as, very
erroneously, to suggest the idea of suicide. Whilst his strength
remained, he endeavoured to disperse melancholy by some of the old
methods. In the winter of 1783-4 he got together the few surviving
members of the old Ivy Lane Club, which had flourished when he was
composing the _Dictionary_; but the old place of meeting had vanished,
most of the original members were dead, and the gathering can have been
but melancholy. He started another club at the Essex Head, whose members
were to meet twice a week, with the modest fine of threepence for
non-attendance. It appears to have included a rather "strange mixture"
of people, and thereby to have given some scandal to Sir John Hawkins
and even to Reynolds. They thought that his craving for society,
increased by his loss of Streatham, was leading him to undignified
concessions.

Amongst the members of the club, however, were such men as Horsley and
Windham. Windham seems to have attracted more personal regard than most
politicians, by a generous warmth of enthusiasm not too common in the
class. In politics he was an ardent disciple of Burke's, whom he
afterwards followed in his separation from the new Whigs. But, though
adhering to the principles which Johnson detested, he knew, like his
preceptor, how to win Johnson's warmest regard. He was the most eminent
of the younger generation who now looked up to Johnson as a venerable
relic from the past. Another was young Burke, that very priggish and
silly young man as he seems to have been, whose loss, none the less,
broke the tender heart of his father. Friendships, now more
interesting, were those with two of the most distinguished authoresses
of the day. One of them was Hannah More, who was about this time coming
to the conclusion that the talents which had gained her distinction in