Five years after the death of Garrick, Dr. Johnson dined with the Club _for the last time_. This is one of the most melancholy entries by Boswell. "On Tuesday, June 22 (1784), I dined with him (Johnson) at the Literary Club, the last time of his being in that respectable society. The other members present were the Bishop of St. Asaph, Lord Eliot, Lord Palmerston (father of the Premier), Dr. Fordyce, and Mr. Malone. He looked ill; but he had such a manly fortitude, that he did not trouble the company with melancholy complaints. They all showed evident marks of kind concern about him, with which he was much pleased, and he exerted himself to be as entertaining as his indisposition allowed him."
From the time of Garrick's death the Club was known as "The Literary Club," since which it has certainly lost its claim to this epithet. It was originally a club of authors _by profession_; it now numbers very few except titled members (the majority having some claims to literary distinction), which was very far from the intention of its founders. To this the author of the paper in the _National Review_ demurs. Writing in 1857, he says: "Perhaps it now numbers on its list more titled members and fewer authors by profession, than its founders would have considered desirable. This opinion, however, is quite open to challenge. Such men as the Marquis of Lansdowne, the late Lord Ellesmere, Lords Brougham, Carlisle, Aberdeen, and Glenelg, hold their place in 'the Literary Club' quite as much by virtue of their contributions to literature, or their enlightened support of it, as by their right of rank." [How many of these noble members have since paid the debt of nature!]
"At all events," says Mr. Taylor, "the Club still acknowledges literature as its foundation, and love of literature as the tie which binds together its members, whatever their rank and callings. Few Clubs can show such a distinguished brotherhood of members as 'the Literary.' Of authors proper, from 1764 to this date (1857), may be enumerated, besides its original members, Johnson and Goldsmith, Dyer and Percy, Gibbon and Sir William Jones, Colman, the two Wartons, Farmer, Steevens, Burney, and Malone, Frere and George Ellis, Hallam, Milman, Mountstuart Elphinstone, and Lord Stanhope.