[2] For the information about Courtenay's election, I am indebted to Professor James M. Osborn of Yale University. Boswell gives no precise date for Courtenay's entry into the Club. His first reference to Courtenay's membership occurs in his journal entry of 19 January 1790. See _Private Papers of James Boswell_, ed. Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle (Privately Printed, 1928-1934), XVIII, 22. See also Boswell's letter to Edmond Malone dated 16 December 1790, _Letters of James Boswell_, ed. C. B. Tinker (Oxford, 1924), II, 409-410. Courtenay and other intimates of Boswell were called "The Gang" by Philip Metcalfe. See _Private Papers_, XVII, 52, 55; XVIII, 15. [3] _Private Papers_, XVI, 106. [4] _Ibid._, XVII, 80. For additional testimony to Courtenay's reputation as a wit, see _Thraliana_, ed. Katharine C. Balderston (Oxford, 1951), I, 486, and James Prior, _Life of Edmond Malone_ (London, 1860), 287-288. [5] _Private Papers_, XVII, 86. [6] _Ibid._, pp. 76-77. [7] _Ibid._, XVI, 178. "M. C." is Mrs. Rudd. [8] See Boswell's letters to Malone, _Letters_, II, 405, 427, and _Private Papers_, XVIII, 100. Courtenay became alarmed over Boswell's deepening melancholy, as seen in this passage from his letter to Malone of 22 February 1791: "Poor Boswell is very low, & desperate & ... melancholy mad, feels no spring, no pleasure in existence, & is so perceptibly altered for the worse that it is remarked everywhere. I try all I can to revivify him, but he [turns?] so tiresomely & tediously--for the same cursed trite commonplace topics, about death &c.--that we grow old, and when we are old, we are not young--that I despair of effecting a cure. Doctors Warren and Devaynes very kindly interest themselves about him, but you wd be of more service to him than anyone." Quoted from a MS at Yale University Library by James Osborn, "Edmond Malone and Dr. Johnson," _Johnson, Boswell and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell in Honour of His Eighty-fourth Birthday_ (Oxford, 1965), p. 16. [9] _Letters_, II, 428, 425. Boswell tried to negotiate loans for Courtenay, and made a successful application to Reynolds. See _Private Papers_, XVII, 85-86, 101-102; XVIII, 120. [10] _Private Papers_, XVIII, 171, 178, 184. [11] See Frank Brady, _Boswell's Political Career_ (New Haven, 1965), p. 169, and Frederick A. Pottle, _The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq._ (Oxford, 1929), p. 147. [12] _Private Papers_, XVIII, 271. This entry is dated 31 March 1794, not long before the journal ends and some thirteen months before Boswell's death. [13] _The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England_ (Princeton, 1941), p. 345. [14] _Ibid._, p. 346. [15] W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., in _The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson_ (New Haven, 1941), pp. 135-138, argues against the notion that Johnson's friends formed such a "school."