(Boswell's note on this is: 'This I find is considered as obscure. I suppose Dr. Johnson meant that I assiduously and earnestly recommended myself to some of the members, as in a canvass for an election into Parliament.') 'Several of the members wished to keep you out. Burke told me he doubted if you were fit for it....' _Boswell_: 'They were afraid of you, Sir, as it was you who proposed me.' _Johnson_: 'Sir, they knew that if they refused you, they'd probably have never got in another. I'd have kept them all out.' Boswell, of course, did not get on equally well with all of Johnson's friends. Goldsmith especially he seems to have disliked, and at a later date Mrs. Thrale, Miss Burney and Baretti; we may suppose that the feeling was mutual, especially after the appearance of the 'Life of Johnson,' in which Boswell made little attempt to conceal his feelings. With Hawkins, who was chosen to write the official biography of Johnson, he was eventually to quarrel. But he had strong supporters in the club. 'Now you are in,' Johnson told him, 'none of them are sorry. Burke says you have so much good humour naturally, it is scarce a virtue.' Beauclerk too appreciated him. 'Beauclerk was very earnest for you.' His greatest friend of this _coterie_ besides Dr. Johnson was Sir Joshua Reynolds. Sir Joshua seems always to have understood and insisted upon the value of Boswell. He was prepared to take up the cudgels. 'He thaws reserve wherever he comes and sets the ball of conversation rolling.'[1] The club, whatever else it might think about Boswell, was obliged to admit that he was excellent company. There were some, no doubt, who had a high opinion of Boswell's abilities; it was admitted by everyone that he had written a good book, and not all, like Gray and Walpole,[2] can have thought that he wrote it by chance. And Boswell too, if not a good literary critic, was interested in books and able to talk about them. The opinions to which he gave expression in the 'Life of Johnson' about various books which came under discussion are often more appreciative and better supported by reason than the dicta of Johnson, and he sometimes shows considerable sagacity. His views about Johnson's own books, and especially his criticism of Johnson's style and the high estimate he formed of the 'Lives of the Poets,' are excellent.