Two younger friends, who became disciples of the sage soon after the appearance of the Rambler, are prominent figures in the later circle.  One of these was Bennet Langton, a man of good family, fine scholarship, and very amiable character.  His exceedingly tall and slender figure was compared by Best to the stork in Raphael’s cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes.  Miss Hawkins describes him sitting with one leg twisted round the other as though to occupy the smallest possible space, and playing with his gold snuff-box with a mild countenance and sweet smile.  The gentle, modest creature was loved by Johnson, who could warm into unusual eloquence in singing his praises.  The doctor, however, was rather fond of discussing with Boswell the faults of his friend.  They seem to have chiefly consisted in a certain languor or sluggishness of temperament which allowed his affairs to get into perplexity.  Once, when arguing the delicate question as to the propriety of telling a friend of his wife’s unfaithfulness, Boswell, after his peculiar fashion, chose to enliven the abstract statement by the purely imaginary hypothesis of Mr. and Mrs. Langton being in this position.  Johnson said that it would be useless to tell Langton, because he would be too sluggish to get a divorce.  Once Langton was the unconscious cause of one of Johnson’s oddest performances.  Langton had employed Chambers, a common friend of his and Johnson’s, to draw his will.  Johnson, talking to Chambers and Boswell, was suddenly struck by the absurdity of his friend’s appearing in the character of testator.  His companions, however, were utterly unable to see in what the joke consisted; but Johnson laughed obstreperously and irrepressibly:  he laughed till he reached the Temple Gate; and when in Fleet Street went almost into convulsions of hilarity.  Holding on by one of the posts in the street, he sent forth such peals of laughter that they seemed in the silence of the night to resound from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch.

Not long before his death, Johnson applied to Langton for spiritual advice.  “I desired him to tell me sincerely in what he thought my life was faulty.”  Langton wrote upon a sheet of paper certain texts recommending Christian charity; and explained, upon inquiry, that he was pointing at Johnson’s habit of contradiction.  The old doctor began by thanking him earnestly for his kindness; but gradually waxed savage and asked Langton, “in a loud and angry tone, What is your drift, sir?” He complained of the well-meant advice to Boswell, with a sense that he had been unjustly treated.  It was a scene for a comedy, as Reynolds observed, to see a penitent get into a passion and belabour his confessor.