PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 1079 
world, a meet successor to Ben Jonson, Dryden, and Pope, and 
the last in England to hold this sceptre unchallenged. Johnson’s 
Court was held at the ‘‘Turk’s Head,” Gerard-street, Soho, where 
met the celebrated club, of which Reynolds, Burke, Nugent, 
Beauclerk, Langton, Goldsmith, Chaimier, and Hawkins were the 
original members. Johnson trained himself for these meetings as an 
athelete trains his physical frame for the coming struggle. Against 
each member of the club he pitted himself in turn; and such was 
his torrent of language, his fertility of resource, his keenness ta 
detect a flaw in argument, and his merciless repartee, that he seldom 
issued from the conflict with colours lowered. 
In contrast with Johnson, Goldsmith was small, mean-looking, 
pitted with the smail-pox, and endowed with a keen sensibility 
which made his life a constant torment. He was the butt of men 
wholly his inferiors in genius, by whom he was regarded as an 
inspired madman ; and who repaid his nervous attempts at con- 
versational wit with shrieks of laughter and cruel practical jokes ; 
but, pen in hand, he was the master of them all, Johnson 
included. 
Of the treatment accorded to this man of genius, who was poet, 
dramatist, and novelist at the same time, ‘Thackeray writes: ‘“ The 
insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of—slander, 
contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity, perverting his com- 
monest motives and actions ; he had his share of these, and one’s 
anger is roused at reading of them as it is at seeing a woman 
insulted, or a child assaulted—at the notion that a creature so very 
gentle and weak, and full of love, should have had to suffer so.” 
During the reigns of the Georges, with much that was sordid 
and venal, there were many national rejoicings over sach events 
as the total surrender of France in America and India, the noble 
deeds of Nelson and his brother seamen, and the crowning victory 
of Wellington at Waterloo. The prideand fervour and exaltation 
engendered by these successful enterprises again proved fertile 
sources of genius, and the nineteenth century ushered in the rich 
literary harvest of the Georgian era. The poets of the so-called 
Lake School broke through the artificial trammels that beset 
English poetry, and, under the influence of German writers, proved 
that familiar and lowly subjects are fit themes for the greatest 
talents. Another poet and novelist, whose inspiration came with 
this heroic age, was also under the influence of the German school, 
but never as a mere imitator or copyist. Scott’s poems are lays 
and romances of chivalry—a national edition with jewelled setting 
of the ballad poetry of his country. His prose works have done 
more than those of any other writer to unite, under the influence 
of a common patriotism, the Celt, Saxon, and Norse elements of 
Scotland. Other poets of the Georgian era are Byron, Shelley, 
and Keats, all of whom died young. Byron and Shelley by 
