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It is likely that Sir Joshua Reynolds refused to join the Essex Head Club because he did not wish to meet Barry. Not long before this time he had censured Barry's delay in entering upon his duties as Professor of painting.

'Barry answered:—"If I had no more to do in the composition of my lectures than to produce such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses, I should soon have done my work, and be prepared to read." It is said this speech was delivered with his fist clenched, in a menacing posture.' (Northcote's Life of Reynolds, ii. 146.)

The Hon. Daines Barrington was the author of an Essay on the Migration of Birds (ante, ii. 248) and of Observations on the Statutes (ante, iii. 314). Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. 24, 1780 (Letters, vii. 464):—

'I am sorry for the Dean of Exeter; if he dies I conclude the leaden mace of the Antiquarian Society will be given to Judge Barrington.' (He was 'second Justice of Chester.')

For Dr. Brocklesby see ante, pp. 176, 230, 338, 400.

Of Mr. John Nichols, Murphy says that 'his attachment to Dr. Johnson was unwearied.' Life of Johnson, p. 66. He was the printer of The Lives of the Poets (ante, p. 36), and the author of Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, Printer, 'the last of the learned printers,' whose apprentice he had been (ante, p. 369). Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 259) says:—

'I scarce ever saw a book so correct as Mr. Nichols's Life of Mr. Bowyer. I wish it deserved the pains he has bestowed on it every way, and that he would not dub so many men great. I have known several of his heroes, who were very little men.'

The Life of Bowyer being recast and enlarged was republished under the title of Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. From 1778 till his death in 1826 the Gentleman's Magazine was in great measure in his hands. Southey, writing in 1804, says:—

'I have begun to take in here at Keswick the Gentleman's Magazine, alias the Oldwomania, to enlighten a Portuguese student among the mountains; it does amuse me by its exquisite inanity, and the glorious and intense stupidity of its correspondents; it is, in truth, a disgrace to the age and the country.' Southey's Life and Correspondence, ii. 281.

Mr. William Cooke, 'commonly called Conversation Cooke,' wrote Lives of Macklin and Foote. Forster's Essays, ii. 312, and Gent. Mag. 1824, p. 374. Mr. Richard Paul Joddrel, or Jodrell, was the author of The Persian Heroine, a Tragedy, which, in Baker's Biog. Dram. i. 400, is wrongly assigned to Sir R.P. Jodrell, M.D. Nichols's Lit. Anec. ix. 2.

For Mr. Paradise see ante, p. 364, note 2.

Dr. Horsley was the controversialist, later on Bishop of St. David's and next of Rochester. Gibbon makes splendid mention of him (Misc. Works, i. 232) when he tells how 'Dr. Priestley's Socinian shield has repeatedly been pierced by the mighty spear of Horsley.' Windham, however, in his Diary in one place (p. 125) speaks of him as having his thoughts 'intent wholly on prospects of Church preferment;' and in another place (p. 275) says that 'he often lays down with great confidence what turns out afterwards to be wrong.' In the House of Lords he once said that 'he did not know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with the laws but to obey them.' Parl. Hist. xxxii. 258. Thurlow rewarded him for his Letters to Priestley by a stall at Gloucester, 'saying that "those who supported the Church should be supported by it."' Campbell's Chancellors, ed. 1846, v. 635.

For Mr. Windham, see ante, p. 200.

Hawkins (Life of Johnson, p. 567) thus writes of the formation of the Club:—

'I was not made privy to this his intention, but all circumstances considered, it was no matter of surprise to me when I heard that the great Dr. Johnson had, in the month of December 1783, formed a sixpenny club at an ale-house in Essex-street, and that though some of the persons thereof were persons of note, strangers, under restrictions, for three pence each night might three nights in a week hear him talk and partake of his conversation.'

Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 103) says:—

'Boswell was well justified in his resentment of my father's designation of this club as a sixpenny club, meeting at an ale-house. ... Honestly speaking, I dare say my father did not like being passed over.'

Sir Joshua Reynolds, writing of the club, says:—

'Any company was better than none; by which Johnson connected himself with many mean persons whose presence he could command. For this purpose he established a club at a little ale-house in Essex-street, composed of a strange mixture of very learned and very ingenious odd people. Of the former were Dr. Heberden, Mr. Windham, Mr. Boswell, Mr. Steevens, Mr. Paradise. Those of the latter I do not think proper to enumerate.' Taylor's Life of Reynolds, ii. 455.

It is possible that Reynolds had never seen the Essex Head, and that the term 'little ale-house' he had borrowed from Hawkins's account. Possibly too his disgust at Barry here found vent. Murphy (Life of Johnson, p. 124) says:—

'The members of the club were respectable for their rank, their talents, and their literature.'

The 'little ale-house' club saw one of its members, Alderman Clarke (ante, p. 258), Lord Mayor within a year; another, Horsley, a Bishop within five years; and a third, Windham, Secretary at War within ten years. Nichols (Literary Anecdotes, ii. 553) gives a list of the 'constant members' at the time of Johnson's death.