SECOND CONVERSATION.

Tooke. I am lying in my form, a poor timid hare, and turning my eyes back on the field I have gone through: has not Doctor Johnson a long lash to start me with?

Johnson. Take your own course.

Tooke. Expect then a circuitous and dodging one. Our hospitable friend, by inviting me so soon again to meet you, proves to me his high opinion of your toleration and endurance.

Johnson. Sir, we can endure those who bring us information and are unwilling to obtrude it.

Tooke. I can promise the latter only. We are two somnambulists who have awakened each other by meeting. Let us return to our old quarters, and pick up words, as before, now our eyes are open.

Johnson. Is your coat-sleeve well furnished with little slips and scraps, as it was when we met last?

Tooke. I am much afraid, that I may have forgotten what I then brought forward; and if by chance I should occasionally make the same remark.over again on the same word, I must bespeak your indulgence and pardon.

Johnson. I wish, sir, you had not bowed to me in that manner when you spoke your last words: such an act of courtesy brings all the young ladies about us. They can not be much interested by our conversation.

Tooke. That must entirely depend on you. But as our language, like the Greek, the Latin, and the French, may be purified and perfected by the ladies, I hope you will interest them in the discussion, to which this evening I bring only slight materials.

You frown on them, Doctor! but you would not drive them away; and they know it. They fear your frown no more than the sparrows and linnets, in old times, feared the scythe and other implements of the garden god.

Hanged, drawn, and quartered.' Such is the sequence of words employed in the sentence on traitors.

Johnson. And, sir, are you here to remark it ?

Tooke. It seems so; and not without the need.

Johnson. Traitors must first have been drawn to the place of punishment.

A sports

Tooke. True; and hence a vulgar error in the learned. man will tell you that a hare is drawn when its entrails are taken out. The traitor was drawn, surely enough, to the block or gallows; but the law always states its sentences clearly, although its provisions. and enactments not so. The things to be suffered come in due order. Here the criminal is first hanged, then drawn, then his body is cut into quarters.

Johnson. I believe you may be right. You have not answered me whether you come supplied with your instruments of torture, your grammatical questions.

Tooke. I have many of these in my memory, and some on the back of a letter. Permit me first to ask whether we can say, I hal hear?

Johnson. You mean to say heard.

Tooke. No; I mean the words I had hear.
Johnson. Why ask me so idle a question?

Tooke. Because I find in the eighth chapter of Rasselas, “I had rather hear thee dispute." The intervention of rather can not make it more or less proper.

Johnson. Sir, you are right. I hope you do not very often find such inaccuracies in my writings. Can you point out another? Tooke. I should do it with less pleasure than ease; and I doubt whether there is one in fifty pages; which is indeed no moderate concession, no ordinary praise for we English are less attentive to correctness and purity of style than any other nation, ancient or modern, that ever pretended to elegance or erudition.

:

Johnson. Sir, you have reason on your side.

Tooke. In having Doctor Johnson with me.

Johnson. I have observed the truth of what you say, and I wonder I never have published my remark.

Tooke. Permit me, my dear sir, to partake of your wonder on this subject; you have excited mine on so many. But since you authorise me to adduce an instance of your incorrectness, for which I ought to be celebrated among the great discoverers.

Johnson. No flattery, sir! no distortion of body! stand upright and speak out.

Tooke. The second paragraph in Rasselas is this: "Rasselas was

the fourth son of the mighty Emperor in whose dominions the father of waters begins his course; whose bounty, &c." Now whose must grammatically appertain to "the mighty Emperor." But we soon discover by the context that it belongs to "the father of waters." Johnson. I am afraid you are correct.

Tooke. My dear sir! let us never be afraid of any man's possessing this advantage, but always of his having fraud and falsehood. Reason will come over to our side if we pay her due respect when we find her on the side of an adversary. But I am not yours: let her sit between us, and let us enjoy her smiles and court her approbation. · Johnson (aside). Strange man! it is difficult to think him half so wicked as he is. But I am inclined to believe that we may be marvellously infatuated by a mountebank's civility.

Tooke. Doctor, if your soliloquy is terminated, as your turning round to me again seems to indicate, may I ask whether the Nile is legitimately the father of waters ? The Ocean seems to possess a prior right: and the Eridanus has enjoyed the prescriptive title, King of Rivers, from collecting a greater number of streams than any known among the ancients. But the Nile, as far as the ancients knew, collected none.

Johnson. Insufferably captious.

Tooke. The captious are never insufferable where nothing is to be caught. Let us set others right as often as we can, without hurting them or ourselves. If this is to be done in either, the setting right is an expensive process.

Johnson. Begin, sir.

Tooke. We will begin our amicable engagement in the same manner as hostilities in the field are usually begun. A few straggling troops fire away first, from hedges and bushes. As far indeed as I am concerned, there will be no order throughout the whole, from first to last. Whatever the part of speech may be, it pretends to the advantages of no lineal descent, and claims no right of appointing a successor. As we appeal to the Roman laws in grammar rather than to the custom of the land: pray why are not resistance," and " attendance," spelt with e, like "residence" and "permanence," all proceeding from participles of the same form, "resistens," attendens," residens," permanens ?" We write "correspondent," "student," "penitent," "resident," yet we always find "assistant."

Johnson. This, like most irregularities, arises from inattention and slovenliness, not from ignorance or perverseness. Is it not also strange that won should be the preterite of win? when "begun" is the preterite of "begin."

Tooke. Strange indeed. Ben Jonson uses uun in his comedy of Every Man in his Humour. So if we write said and paid, why not staid and praid? If we write laid why not allaid and delaid? Now, for a substantive or two. South properly writes "begger." Waller, in the same age, "vegetals," which I think is preferable to "veget›ables." There is a reason why the word "eatables" is better spelt as at present. We want "contradictive for the person, as well as "contradicting" for the thing. We had it and have lost it, while we see other old words brought into use again very indiscreetly. Among the rest the word wend. There is no need of it, unless in poetry. In certain new books we find wended. There is properly no such word: Spenser has coined it unlawfully. Went is the preterite of wend, as lent of lend, spent of spend, bent of bend. These are among the few verbs which do not possess two forms of the preterite; the one ending in ed, the other in t: as pass, passed, past ; ceases, ceased, ceast. There can be no such word as "pass'd," "ceas'd," though we find them printed. We write, "I talked, I walked, I marched," but such words never existed, for these words never were pronounced, and the others never could be. Writing is but the sign of speech; and such writing is a false signal. No word ought to be so written that it can not be pronounced; but when we have the same word before us written plainly, it is a strange perversion to reject the commodious spelling. It is as improper to write alledge or abridge (abrege) as colledge or knowledge. Kerchief also is wrongly spelt; it has nothing to do with "chief." Milton writes in the Penseroso

"Kercheft in a comely cloud."

"ten times as high; the

We, in imitation of the French, say, Italians “ten turns" (dieci volte); the Romans and Greeks expressed it by the simple adverb. Highth has nothing to do with time: here is an ellipsis, "ten times told." I now proceed to a favourite word of yours, which is wrongly spelt: allegiance. In its present form it appears to come from allege, or (as we write it) alledge; whereas it comes from liege, and should be spelt "alliegeance."

Johnson. You have asked me many questions; let me ask you

one.

What think you of calling a female writer an author, in which the terminating syllable expresses the noun masculine ?

Tooke. Since we in English have no nouns masculine by declension, I see no reason why we should not extend the privileges of those we adopt: a queen may be called a governor, and a god-mother a sponsor: I wish we had authority for terminating the words in ess as we have for writing others which usually end in or. As our English terminations in few words designate the genders, I should not hesitate.

Johnson. Do you hesitate at anything?

Tooke. At differing in opinion from a superior.
Johnson. Superior! do you admit superiors ?

Tooke. I do not admit that a ducal coronet may constitute one, nor that men can make great him whom God has made little the attempt is foolish and impious. But whoever has improved by industry the talents his Maker has bestowed on him, to a greater amount than I have done, is my superior. If brighter wit, if acuter judgment, if more creative genius, are allotted him, I reverence in his person a greater than I am, and believe that Almighty God has granted me the sight of him and conversation with him, that I may feel at once my own wants and my own powers: that I may be at once humble and grateful.

Johnson. You? you?

Tooke (bous). Accept the sign of both, however inadequate the expression.

Johnson. This is really stooping to conquer. I was wrong and rude. I will not offend so again.

Tooke. I am encouraged to pursue my inquiries. What do you think of horse godmother and horse-laugh?

Johnson. Expressions of coarseness. The Greeks, instead of horse, employed ox. Boumastos, the bumastus of Virgil's Georgics, is a large species of grape: boupais is our booby.

Tooke. Very true, Doctor! but may I whisper in your ear my suspicion that the horse has nothing to do with the godmother or the laugh. Indeed I believe no animal has less the appearance of laughter, or is less liable to those outward and visible signs of sickness which sometimes are attributed to him in the comparison, "Sick as a horse." The godmother of the personage I whispered to you may readily be imagined a very coarse and indelicate one; her