Papers of the Manchester Literary Club (V. 30)
by Manchester Literary Club (9781458838292)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ASHBOUENE AND DR. JOHNSON. By John MohTimer. T HAD forgotten, until Mr. Clement Shorter reminded one the other day, in a Literary Letter in The Sphere, specially devoted to Dr. Johnson, that the thirteenth of December is the anniversary of the death of the great lexicographer. Some of the closing days of his life were spent at Ashbourne, a country town for which, and in large measure, because of its association with him, I have something like an affectionate regard. It was this association, indeed, combined with certain quaint and old-world charms of its own, which led me, on a recent November day, to go and see it again, and so, in the evolution of consequences, to the making of these reminiscential and rambling remarks. Some years, a goodly number of them, have passed since I was there before, and in company with some pilgrims from the Manchester Literary Club. Our ultimate destination on that occasion was Dovedale, and, in driving thither through the town, we did no more than make it a halting place for light refreshment, going and returning. It has seemed to me since that, in this hurried progress, we were a little neglectful of its literary claims. That gentle angler Izaak Walton is, among authors, one of our favourites at the Club, and the discussion of him has, on more than one occasion, formed a pleasant feature in our literary recreations. It was a fitting thing, therefore, that we shouldmake holiday in one of the scenes to which he has given an added charm, and that we should find a congenial resting place in the inn which bears his name. But the Great Cham, the founder of the first Literary Club, looms more largely in our literary purview, and in that connection has been for us a kind of patron saint. We have his portrait in our club-room, and for a long tim...

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