To the same master-hand we owe this cabinet picture. "The [Literary Club] room is before us, and the table on which stand the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerk, the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up--the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease; the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop; the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and the nose moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the 'Why, Sir?' and the 'What then, Sir?' and the 'No, Sir!' and the 'You don't see your way through the question, Sir!'"
[18] The house in Ivy-lane, which bore the name of Johnson, and where the Literary Club is said to have been held, was burnt down a few years since: it had long been a chop-house.
However Goldsmith might court the learned circle of the Literary Club, he was ill at ease there; and he had social resorts in which he indemnified himself for this restraint by indulging his humour without control. One of these was a Shilling Whist Club, which met at the Devil Tavern. The company delighted in practical jokes, of which Goldsmith was often the butt. One night, he came to the Club in a hackney-coach, when he gave the driver a guinea instead of a shilling. He set this down as a dead loss; but, on the next club-night, he was told that a person at the street-door wanted to speak to him; he went out, and to his surprise and delight, the coachman had brought him back the guinea! To reward such honesty, he collected a small sum from the Club, and largely increased it from his own purse, and with this reward sent away the coachman. He was still loud in his praise, when one of the Club asked to see the returned guinea. To Goldsmith's confusion it proved to be a counterfeit: the laughter which succeeded, showed him that the whole was a hoax, and the pretended coachman as much a counterfeit as the guinea. He was so disconcerted that he soon beat a retreat for the evening.