Content area
Full Text
Diana Langton wrote to her son Bennet in 1792 saying she had been reading Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., published the year before. She thought the author's "strict adherence to the character of a Faithful Biographer had rather preval'd over his Judgement in Some Instances," meaning that Boswell had discussed parts of Johnson's character he should have kept to himself, but Mrs. Langton admired the book nonetheless. She told her son that she had recently talked about the work to a family friend who said that Bennet's "learning, fine Genius & long Friendship with the Doctor Qualify'd you more eminently for giving the world his Memory than the Present Author."1
Her son, to be sure, seemed at first glance better qualified to write Johnson's life than James Boswell. For one thing, he was better educated, being knowledgeable in Greek literature, widely read in history, and fluent in at least six foreign languages. In 1790 Oxford University awarded him an honorary doctorate. He had also known Johnson longer and was more intimately acquainted with the great man's private thoughts and activities. But Langton felt no urge to give the world the Doctor's memory. He chose instead to share with Boswell what he knew of Johnson, thereby helping to make the Life a much greater work than it otherwise would have been.
Yet given his long association with Johnson, his friendship with Boswell, and his important contributions to the Life, Bennet Langton remains perhaps the most enigmatic member of the so-called Johnson Circle. He has attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention. His entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography corrects several errors in the original DNB article of a hundred years earlier, but it offers only a brief outline of his life. George Birkbeck Hill, in an essay titled "Bennet Langton" for the December 1874 issue of Cornhill Magazine, brought together what was known of Langton at the time. But most of his information came from published sources, primarily Boswell's Life. More recently, Charles N. Fifer in 1976 expanded our knowledge of Langton with the publication of the third volume in the Yale Edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell. Titled The Correspondence of James Boswell with Certain Members of the Club, Including Oliver Goldsmith,...