Bennet Langton was of an ancient family, who held their ancestral estate of
Langton in Lincolnshire, a great title to respect with Johnson. "Langton,
sir," he would say, "has a grant of free warrant from Henry the Second; and
Cardinal Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of this family."
Langton was of a mild, contemplative, enthusiastic nature. When but
eighteen years of age he was so delighted with reading Johnson's Rambler
that he came to London chiefly with a view to obtain an introduction to the
author. Boswell gives us an account of his first interview, which took
place in the morning. It is not often that the personal appearance of an
author agrees with the preconceived ideas of his admirer. Langton, from
perusing the writings of Johnson, expected to find him a decent, well
dressed, in short a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down
from his bed chamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a large uncouth
figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his
clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so
animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so
congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived
for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved.
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