"Your country has been in danger of losing one of its brightest ornaments, and I of losing one of my oldest and kindest friends: but I hope you will still live long, for the honour of the nation: and that more enjoyment of your elegance, your intelligence, and your benevolence, is still reserved for, dear Sir, your most affectionate, &c. SAM. JOHNSON." This is a good example of "Johnsonese" in letter-writing. Nowadays we cannot imagine a letter written in such a style to an intimate friend of 30 years' standing. But Johnson meant every word of it. On his death-bed his last requests of Sir Joshua were simpler: "To forgive him thirty pounds which he had borrowed of him; to read the Bible; and never to use his pencil on a Sunday." Sir Joshua readily acquiesced. FOOTNOTES: [26] See p. 24. _Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk_ "Sir," said Dr Johnson "I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance," and even Boswell did not attempt "to trace his acquaintance with each particular person." A task from which Boswell shrank will certainly not be attempted here; but two friends, who were both original members of the Literary Club and whose names occur very often in Boswell's story, must be considered for a moment--Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk. Bennet Langton, who had come to London "chiefly with the view of endeavouring to be introduced to its [_The Rambler's_] authour," happened to stay in a house visited by Mr Levet, and Mr Levet obtained Johnson's permission to bring his admirer to visit him. "Mr Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner. From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent, well-drest, in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down from his bedchamber, about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved. Johnson was not the less ready to love Mr Langton, for his being of a very ancient family." Langton was "a very tall, meagre, long-visaged man, much resembling a stork standing on one leg"; Johnson, with his usual fondness for nicknames, appropriately called him "Lanky." He visited him at his home in Lincolnshire, at Rochester, and at Warley Camp (where he was stationed with his regiment of militia[27]) and, though he did not always approve of his domestic arrangements ("His table is rather coarse" he said "and he has his children too much about him"), he kept a deep and almost reverent affection for the pious and scholarly country squire.