[734] Lord Charlemont said that 'Beauclerk possessed an exquisite taste, various accomplishments, and the most perfect good breeding. He was eccentric, often querulous, entertaining a contempt for the generality of the world, which the politeness of his manners could not always conceal; but to those whom he liked most generous and friendly. Devoted at one time to pleasure, at another to literature, sometimes absorbed in play, sometimes in books, he was altogether one of the most accomplished, and when in good humour and surrounded by those who suited his fancy, one of the most agreeable men that could possibly exist.' Lord Charlemont's Life, i. 210. Hawkins writes (Life, p. 422) that 'over all his behaviour there beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and good-humour as communicated itself to all around him.' Mrs. Piozzi said of him:—'Topham Beauclerk (wicked and profligate as he wished to be accounted) was yet a man of very strict veracity. Oh Lord! how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk.' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 348. Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 40) said that 'Beauclerk was a strangely absent person.' He once went to dress for a dinner-party in his own house. 'He forgot all about his guests; thought that it was bed-time, and got into bed. His servant, coming to tell him that his guests were waiting for him, found him fast asleep.'
[735] It was to the Round-house that Captain Booth was first taken in Fielding's Amelia, Book i, chap. 2.
[736]
'Blends, in exception to all general rules,
Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools.'
Pope, Moral Essays, ii. 275.
[737] In the college which The Club was to set up at St. Andrew's, Beauclerk was to have the chair of natural philosophy. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 25, 1773. Goldsmith, writing to Langton in 1771, says: 'Mr. Beauclerk is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle; deep in chymistry and physics.' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 283. Boswell described to Temple, in 1775, Beauclerk's villa at Muswell Hill, with its 'observatory, laboratory for chymical experiments.' Boswell's Letters, p. 194.
[738] 'I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.' 1 Henry IV. Act v. sc. 4.
[739] 'Bishop. A cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges, and sugar.' Johnson's Dictionary.
[740] Mr. Langton has recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are in Lord Lansdowne's Drinking Song to Sleep, and run thus:—
'Short, very short be then thy reign,
For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again.' BOSWELL.