'
As a small proof of his kindliness and delicacy of feeling, the
following circumstance may be mentioned: One evening when we were in the
street together, and I told him I was going to sup at Mr. Beauclerk's,
he said, 'I'll go with you.' After having walked part of the way,
seeming to recollect something, he suddenly stopped and said, 'I cannot
go,--but _I do not love Beauclerk the less_.'
On the frame of his portrait, Mr. Beauclerk had inscribed,--
'----_Ingenium ingens
Inculto latet hoc sub corpore_[567].'
After Mr. Beauclerk's death, when it became Mr. Langton's property, he
made the inscription be defaced. Johnson said complacently, 'It was kind
in you to take it off;' and then after a short pause, added, 'and not
unkind in him to put it on.'
He said, 'How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at
when he is sick.' He mentioned one or two. I recollect only
Thrale's[568].
He observed, 'There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an
old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when
leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is
nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people
will shrug up their shoulders, and say, 'His memory is going[569].
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