I record this minute detail, which some may think trifling, in order to shew clearly how this great man, whose mind could grasp such large and extensive subjects, as he has shewn in his literary labours, was yet well-informed in the common affairs of life, and loved to illustrate them.

Mr. Walker, the celebrated master of elocution[640], came in, and then we went up stairs into the study.  I asked him if he had taught many clergymen.  JOHNSON.  ‘I hope not.’  WALKER.  ’I have taught only one, and he is the best reader I ever heard, not by my teaching, but by his own natural talents.’  JOHNSON.  ’Were he the best reader in the world, I would not have it told that he was taught.’  Here was one of his peculiar prejudices.  Could it be any disadvantage to the clergyman to have it known that he was taught an easy and graceful delivery?  BOSWELL.  ’Will you not allow, Sir, that a man may be taught to read well?’ JOHNSON.  ’Why, Sir, so far as to read better than he might do without being taught, yes.  Formerly it was supposed that there was no difference in reading, but that one read as well as another.’  BOSWELL.  ’It is wonderful to see old Sheridan as enthusiastick about oratory as ever[641],’ WALKER.  ’His enthusiasm as to what oratory will do, may be too great:  but he reads well.’  JOHNSON.  ’He reads well, but he reads low[642]; and you know it is much easier to read low than to read high; for when you read high, you are much more limited, your loudest note can be but one, and so the variety is less in proportion to the loudness.  Now some people have occasion to speak to an extensive audience, and must speak loud to be heard.’  WALKER.  ’The art is to read strong, though low.’

Talking of the origin of language; JOHNSON.  ’It must have come by inspiration.  A thousand, nay, a million of children could not invent a language.  While the organs are pliable, there is not understanding enough to form a language; by the time that there is understanding enough, the organs are become stiff.  We know that after a certain age we cannot learn to pronounce a new language.  No foreigner, who comes to England when advanced in life, ever pronounces English tolerably well; at least such instances are very rare.  When I maintain that language must have come by inspiration, I do not mean that inspiration is required for rhetorick, and all the beauties of language; for when once man has language, we can conceive that he may gradually form modifications of it.  I mean only that inspiration seems to me to be necessary to give man the faculty of speech; to inform him that he may have speech; which I think he could no more find out without inspiration, than cows or hogs would think of such a faculty.’  WALKER.  ’Do you think, Sir, that there are any perfect synonimes in any language?’ JOHNSON.  ’Originally there were not; but by using words negligently, or in poetry, one word comes to be confounded with another.’

He talked of Dr. Dodd[643].  ’A friend of mine, (said he,) came to me and told me, that a lady wished to have Dr. Dodd’s picture in a bracelet, and asked me for a motto.  I said, I could think of no better than Currat Lex.  I was very willing to have him pardoned, that is, to have the sentence changed to transportation:  but, when he was once hanged, I did not wish he should be made a saint.’