Club Life of London, Vol. 1 (of 2): With Anecdotes of the Clubs, Coffee-Houses and Taverns of the Metropolis During the 17th, 18th, and 19th CenturiesTimbs, John
History
Club Life of London, Vol. 1 (of 2): With Anecdotes of the Clubs, Coffee-Houses and Taverns of the Metropolis During the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries
Timbs, John
Clubs -- England -- London; Literary landmarks -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs
"Among men equally conspicuous in letters and the Senate, what names
outshine those of Burke and Sheridan, Canning, Brougham, and Macaulay?
Of statesmen and orators proper, the Club claims Fox, Windham, Thomas
Grenville, Lord Liverpool; Lords Lansdowne, Aberdeen, and Clarendon.
Natural science is represented by Sir Joseph Banks, in the last
century; by Professor Owen in this. Social science can have no nobler
representative than Adam Smith; albeit, Boswell did think the Club had
lost caste by electing him. Mr. N. W. Senior is the political
economist of the present Club. Whewell must stand alone as the
embodiment of omniscience, which before him was unrepresented.
Scholars and soldiers may be equally proud of Rennel, Leake, and Mure.
Besides the clergymen already enumerated as authors, the Church has
contributed a creditable list of bishops and inferior dignitaries:
Shipley of St. Asaph, Barnard of Killaloe, Marley of Pomfret,
Hinchcliffe of Peterborough, Douglas of Salisbury, Blomfield of
London, Wilberforce of Oxford, Dean Vincent of Westminster, Archdeacon
Burney; and Dr. Hawtrey, late master and present provost of Eton.
"Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Charles Eastlake are its two chief
pillars of art, slightly unequal. With them we may associate Sir
William Chambers and Charles Wilkins. The presence of Drs. Nugent,
Blagden, Fordyce, Warren, Vaughan, and Sir Henry Halford, is a proof
that in the Club medicine has from the first kept up its kinship with
literature.
"The profession of the law has given the Society Lord Ashburton, Lord
Stowell, and Sir William Grant, Charles Austin, and Pemberton Leigh.
Lord Overstone may stand as the symbol of money; unless Sir George
Cornewall Lewis is to be admitted to that honour by virtue of his
Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Sir George would, probably, prefer
his claims to Club membership as a scholar and political writer, to
any that can be picked out of a Budget.
"Take it all in all, the Literary Club has never degenerated from the
high standard of intellectual gifts and personal qualities, which made
those unpretending suppers at the Turk's Head an honour eagerly
contended for by the wisest, wittiest, and noblest of the eighteenth
century."
Malone, in 1810, gave the total number of those who had been members
of the Club from its foundation, at seventy-six, of whom fifty-five
had been authors. Since 1810, however, literature has far less
preponderance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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