XXIX.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

(1775-1864.)

DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN.

[Written about 1824.J

SAMUEL JOHNSON AND JOHN HORNE (TOOKE).1

Tooke. Doctor Johnson, I rejoice in the opportunity, late as it presents itself, of congratulating you on the completion of your great undertaking; my bookseller sent me your Dictionary the day it came from the press, and it has exercised ever since a good part of my time and attention.

Johnson. Who are you, sir?

Tooke. My name is Horne.

Johnson. What is my Dictionary, sir, to you?
Tooke. A treasure.

Johnson. Keep it then at home and to yourself, sir; as you would any other treasure, and talk no more about it than you would about that. You have picked up some knowledge, sir; but out of dirty places. What man in his senses would fix his study on the hustings? When a gentleman takes it into his head to conciliate the rabble, I deny his discretion and I doubt his honesty. Sir, what can you have to say to me?

Tooke. Doctor, my studies have led me some little way into etymology, and I am interested in whatever contributes to the right knowledge of our language.

1 "J. Horne assumed the name of Tooke after the supposed date of this Conversation."

Johnson. Sir, have you read our old authors?

Tooke. Almost all of them that are printed and extant.
Johnson. Prodigious! do you speak truth?

Tooke. To the best of my belief.

Johnson. Sir, how could you, a firebrand tossed about by the populace, find leisure for so much reading?

Tooke. The number of English books printed before the accession of James the First is smaller than you appear to imagine ; and the manuscripts, I believe, are not numerous; certainly in the libraries of our Universities they are scanty. I wish you had traced in your preface all the changes made in the orthography these last three centuries, for which five additional pages would have been sufficient. The first attempt to purify and reform the tongue was made by John Lyly, in a book entitled Euphues and his England, and a most fantastical piece of fustian it is. This author has often been confounded with William Lily, a better grammarian, and better known. Benjamin Jonson did somewhat, and could have done more. Although our governors have taken no pains either to improve our language or to extend it, none in Europe is spoken habitually by so many. The French boast the universality of theirs yet the Germans, the Spaniards, and the Italians may contend with them on this ground: for as the Dutch is a dialect of the German, so is the Portuguese of the Spanish, and not varying in more original words than the Milanese and Neapolitan from the Tuscan. The lingua franca, which pervades the coasts of the Mediterranean, the Ionian, and the Ægean seas, is essentially Italian. The languages of the two most extensive empires in Europe are confined to the fewest people. There are not thirteen millions who speak Turkish, nor fifteen who speak Russian, though branches of the Slavonic are scattered far. If any respect had been had to the literary glory of our country, whereon much of its political is and ever will be dependent, many millions more would at this time be speaking in English; and the Irish,

2 See the first Selection in this volume,

the Welsh, and the Canadians, like the Danes and Saxons, would have forgotten they were conquered people.

We should be anxious both to improve our language and to extend it. England ought to have no colony in which it will not be soon the only one spoken. Nations may be united by identity of speech more easily than by identity of laws: for identity of laws only shows the conquered that they are bound to another people, while identity of speech shows them that they are bound with it. There is no firm conjunction but this; none that does not retain on it the scar and seam, and often with much soreness. Johnson. So far, I believe, I may agree with you, and remain a good subject.

Tooke. Let us now descend from generalities to particulars. Our spelling has undergone as many changes as the French, and

more.

Johnson. And because it hath undergone many, you would make it undergo more! There is a fastidiousness in the use of language that indicates an atrophy of mind. We must take words as the world presents them to us, without looking at the root. If we grubbed under this and laid it bare, we should leave no room for our thoughts to lie evenly, and every expression would be constrained and crampt. We should scarcely find a metaphor in the purest author that is not false or imperfect, nor could we imagine one ourselves that would not be stiff and frigid. Take now for instance a phrase in common use. You are rather late. Can anything seem plainer? Yet rather, as you know, meant origi nally earlier, being the comparative of rathe; the "rathe primrose" of the poet recalls it. We cannot say, You are sooner late: but who is so troublesome and silly as to question the propriety of saying, You are rather late? We likewise say, bad orthography and false orthography: how can there be false or bad right spelling?

3

Tooke. I suspect there are more of these inadvertencies in our language than in any other.

3 From MILTON's Lycidas, 142.

Johnson. Sir, our language is a very good language.

Tooke. Were it not, I should be less solicitous to make it better. Johnson. You make it better, sir!

Tooke. By reverencing the authority of the learned, by exposing the corruptions of the ignorant, and by reclaiming what never ought to have been obsolete.

Johnson. Sir, the task is hopeless: little can be done now.

Tooke. And because little can be done, must we do nothing? Because with all our efforts we are imperfect, may not we try to be virtuous? Many of the anomalies in our language can be avoided or corrected: if many shall yet remain, something at least will have been done for elegance and uniformity.

Johnson. I hate your innovations.

Tooke. I not only hate them, but would resist and reject them, if I could. It is only such writers as you that can influence the public by your authority and example.

Johnson. Sir, if the best writer in England dared to spell three words differently from his contemporaries, and as Milton spent [spelt] them, he would look about in vain for a publisher.

Tooke. Yet Milton is most careful and exact in his spelling, and his ear is as correct as his learning. His language would continue to be the language of his country, had it not been for the Restoration.

on.

Johnson. I have patience, sir! I have patience, sir! Pray go

Tooke. I will take advantage of so much affability; and I hope that patience, like other virtues, may improve by exercise.

On the return of Charles from the Continent, some of his followers may really have lost their native idiom, or at least may have forgotten the graver and solider parts of it; for many were taken over in their childhood. On their return to England, nothing gave such an air of fashion as imperfection in English: it proved high breeding, it displayed the court and loyalty. Homebred English ladies soon acquired it from their noble and brave gallants; and it became the language of the Parliament, of the

Church, and of the Stage. Between the last two places was pretty equally distributed all the facetiousness left among us.

Johnson. Keep clear of the church, sir, and stick to language.
Tooke. Punctually will I obey each of your commands.

Johnson. Did South and Cowley and Waller fall into this slough? Tooke. They could not keep others from it. I peruse their works with pleasure: but South, the greatest of them, is negligent and courtly in his spelling, and sometimes, although not often, more gravely incorrect.

Johnson. And pray now what language do you like?

Tooke. The best in all countries is that which is spoken by intelligent women of too high rank for petty affectation, and too much request in society for deep study. Cicero praises more than one such among the Romans; the number was greater among the Greeks. We have no writer in our language so pure as Madame de Sévigné. Indeed we must acknowledge that the French far excell us in purity of style. When have we seen, or when can we expect, such a writer as Le Sage? In our days there is scarcely an instance of a learned or unlearned man who has written gracefully, excepting your friend Goldsmith and (if your modesty will admit my approaches) yourself. In your Lives of the Poets, you have laid aside the sceptre of Jupiter for the wand of Mercury, and have really called up with it some miserable ghosts from the dead. Johnson. Sir, I desire no compliments.

Tooke. Before, I offered not my compliment but my tribute; I dreaded a repulse; but I little expected to see, as I do, the finger of Aurora on your face.

Johnson. If the warmth of the room is enough to kindle your poetry, well may it possess a slight influence on my cheek. The learned men, I presume, are superseded by your public orators.

Tooke. Our parliamentary speakers of most eminence are superficial in scholarship, as we understand the word, and by no means dangerously laden with any species of knowledge. Burke is the most eloquent and philosophical of them; Fox the readiest at reply, the stoutest debater, the acutest disputant.