Beauclerk, TOPHAM

Beauclerk, TOPHAM (1739-80), who figures in Boswell's Johnson as the loved and intimate friend of the lexicographer, was the only son of Lord Sydney Beauclerk and a grandson of the first Duke of St Albans. He had the easy air of a man of the world who had seen much and who could describe what he had seen; his conversation was lively, and his tastes in science and literature wide and eclectic. During his friend's last illness, Johnson said he 'could walk to the extent of the diameter of the earth to save Beauclerk,' and after his death wrote to Boswell, 'Poor dear Beauclerk, his wit, his folly, his acuteness and maliciousness, his merriment and reasoning are now over. Such another will not often be found among mankind.' In 1768 he had married Diana, eldest daughter of the second Duke of Marlborough, two days after her divorce from Lord Bolingbroke. An artist of some ability, still known through Bartolozzi's engravings, she was born in 1734, and died in 1808. See G. Birkbeck Hill's Dr Johnson, his Friends and his Critics (1878).