Johnson was in the zenith of his fame when literature, politics, and fashion began to blend together again by hardly perceptible shades, like the colours in shot-silk, as they had partially done in the Augustan age of Queen Anne.  One marked sign was the formation of the Literary Club (The Club, as it still claims to be called), which brought together Fox, Burke, Gibbon, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, and Beauclerc, besides blackballing a bishop (the Bishop of Chester), and a lord-chancellor (Camden).[1] Yet it is curious to observe within how narrow a circle of good houses the Doctor’s engagements were restricted.  Reynolds, Paoli, Beauclerc, Allan Ramsay, Hoole, Dilly, Strahan, Lord Lucan, Langton, Garrick, and the Club formed his main reliance as regards dinners; and we find Boswell recording with manifest symptoms of exultation in 1781:  “I dined with him at a bishop’s where were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Berenger, and some more company.  He had dined the day before at another bishop’s.”  His reverence for the episcopal bench well merited some return on their part.  Mr. Seward saw him presented to the Archbishop of York, and described his bow to an Archbishop as such a studied elaboration of homage, such an extension of limb, such a flexion of body, as have seldom or ever been equalled.  The lay nobility were not equally grateful, although his deference for the peerage was extreme.  Except in Scotland or on his travels, he is seldom found dining with a nobleman.

[Footnote 1:  Canning was blackballed the first time he was proposed.  He was elected in 1798, Mr. Windham being his proposer, and Dr. Burney his seconder.]

It is therefore hardly an exaggeration to say that he owed more social enjoyment to the Thrales than to all the rest of his acquaintance put together.  Holland House alone, and in its best days, would convey to persons living in our time an adequate conception of the Streatham circle, when it comprised Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, Boswell, Murphy, Dr. Burney and his daughter, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Crewe, Lord Loughborough, Dunning (afterwards Lord Ashburton), Lord Mulgrave, Lord Westcote, Sir Lucas and Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Pepys, Major Holroyd afterwards Lord Sheffield, the Bishop of London and Mrs. Porteous, the Bishop of Peterborough and Mrs. Hinchcliffe, Miss Gregory, Miss Streatfield, &c.  As at Holland House, the chief scene of warm colloquial contest or quiet interchange of mind was the library, a large and handsome room, which the pencil of Reynolds gradually enriched with portraits of all the principal persons who had conversed or studied in it.  To supply any deficiencies on the shelves, a hundred pounds, Madame D’Arblay states, was placed at Johnson’s disposal to expend in books; and we may take it for granted that any new publication suggested by him was ordered at once.  But a bookish couple, surrounded by a literary set, were surely not exclusively dependent on him for this description