Langton was the centre of a group, wherever he happened to be, talking delightfully, and twirling the oblong gold-mounted snuff-box, which promptly appeared as sociabilities began: a conspicuous figure, with his height, his courteous smile, his mild beauty, and his habit of crossing his arms over his breast, or locking his hands together on his knee. He was a great rider, and could run like a hound. He had a queerness of constitution which seemed to leave him at his lowest ebb every afternoon about two of the clock, forgetful, weary, confused, and without an idea in his head; but after a little food, he was himself again. At dinner-parties he usually rose fasting, “such was the perpetual flow of his conversation, and such the incessant claim made upon him.” A morning call from Mr. Langton was a thing to suggest the eternal years; yet we are told that satiety dwelt not where he was; like Cowley, “he never oppressed any man’s parts, or put any man out of countenance.” He had much the same sense of humor as Beauclerk had, and his speech was quite as full of good sense and direct observation, if not as cutting. He indicted a fault of Edmund Burke’s in one extreme stroke: “Burke whisks the end of his tail in the face of an arguer!” Johnson, the arch-whisker of tails, was not to be brought to book; but Burke’s greatness was of a texture to bear and enjoy the thrust. It is curious that Langton was markedly fond of _Hudibras_; such a relish indicates, perhaps, the turn his own wit might have taken, had it not been held in by too much second thought. Johnson was wont to announce that he valued Langton for his piety, his ancient descent, his amiable behavior, and his mastery of Greek. “Who in this town knows anything of Clenardus, sir, but you and I?” he would say. In the midst of his talk Langton would fall into the “vowelled undertone” of the tongue he loved, correcting himself with a little wave of the hands, and the apologetic phrase: “And so it goes on.” “Steeped to the lips in Greek” he was indeed, bursting out with a joyous salute to the moon of Hellas, upon a friend’s doorstep, or making grotesque Hellene puns, for his own delight,[47] upon the blank leaves of a pocket-book. Every one familiar with Johnsoniana will recall the charming and spirited retort written by Dr. Barnard, then Dean of Derry, later, Bishop of Killaloe, which closes: “If I have thoughts and can’t express ’em, Gibbon shall teach me how to dress ’em In terms select and terse; Jones teach me modesty and Greek; Smith, how to think; Burke, how to speak; And Beauclerk, to converse!”