to make money. "Don't you see," said he, "the impropriety of it? To make money is to coin it: you should say get money." The phrase, however, is pretty current. But Johnson was at all times jealous of infractions upon the genuine English lan guage, and prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; such as pledging myself, for undertaking; line, for department or branch, as, the civil line, the banking line.* He was particularly indignant against the almost universal use of the word idea in the sense of ́notion, or opinion, when it is clear that idea can only signify something of which an image can be formed in the mind. We may have an idea or image of a 'mountain, a tree, a building; but we cannot surely have an idea or image of an argument or proposition. Yet we hear the sages of the law' delivering their ideas upon the question under consideration;' and the first speakers in parliament' entirely coinciding in the idea which has been ably stated by an honourable member;'-or,' reprobating an idea as unconstitutional, and fraught with the most dangerous consequences to a great and free country.' son called this modern cant.'".

John

E. "The Irish language is not primitive: it is Teutonic; a mixture of the northern tongues : it has much English in it." JOHNSON." It may have been radically Teutonic; but English and High Dutch have no similarity to the eye, though radically the same. Once, when looking into low Dutch, I 'found, in a whole page, only one word similar to English; stroem, like stream, and it signified tide.”

* A chandler's shop is now scarcely ever advertised to be let or sold, but as " a shop in the general line."-Ed.

E." I remember having seen a Dutch sonnet, in which I found this word, roesnopies. Nobody would think at first that this could be English; but when we inquire, we find roes, rose; and nopie, knob; so we have rose-buds."

When Johnson was engaged on the Lives of the Poets, Boswell applied to the earl of Marchmont, to give him some information concerning Pope. The earl complied with great readiness, but asked, "Will he write the Lives of the Poets impartially? He was the first that brought Whig and Tory into a Dictionary. And what do you think of his definition of excise? Do you know the history of his aversion to the word transpire ?" Then taking down the folio Dictionary, he showed it, with this censure on its secondary sense: "To escape from secrecy to notice; a sense lately innovated from France, without necessity." "The truth was," `said his lordship, "lord Bolingbroke, who left the Jacobites, first used it; therefore it was to be condemned. He should have shown what word would do for it, if it was unnecessary." Boswell afterwards put the question to Johnson. "Why, sir," said he, "get abroad." BOSWELL. "That, sir, is using two words." JOHNSON. "Sir, there is no end of this. You may as well insist to have a word for old age." BOSWELL. "Well, sir, Senectus." JOHNSON. “Nay, sir, to insist always that there should be one word to express a thing in English, because there is one in another language, is to change the language."

Dr. Johnson seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in his own style; for when he had carelessly missed it, he would repeat the thought translated into it. Talking of the comedy of the Rehearsal, he

said, "It has not wit enough to keep it sweet." This was easy;-he therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more round sentence " It has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

Boswell, talking of translation, said, he could not define it, nor could he think of a similitude to illustrate it; but that it appeared to him, the translation of poetry could be only imitation. JOHNSON. "You may translate books of science exactly. You may also translate history, in so far as it is not embellished with oratory, which is poetical. Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language, if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation: but, as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language."

Johnson told, in his lively manner, the following literary anecdote: "Green and Guthrie, an Irishman and a Scotchman, undertook a translation of Duhalde's History of China, Green said of Guthrie, that he knew no English; and Guthrie of Green, that he knew no French; and these two undertook to translate Duhalde's History of China. In this translation there was found, the twenty-sixth day of the new moon.' Now, as the whole age of the moon is but twenty-eight days, the moon, instead of being new, was nearly as old as it could be. The blunder arose from their mistaking the word neuvième, ninth, for nouvelle, or neuve, new."

Mr. Wilkes described oratory, as accompanied with all the charms of poetical expression. JOHNSON. "No, sir; oratory is the power of beating down

your adversary's arguments, and putting better in their place." WILKES." But this does not move the passions." JOHNSON." He must be a weak man, who is to be so moved." WILKES. (naming a celebrated orator) "Amidst all the brilliancy of

**'s imagination, and the exuberance of his wit, there is a strange want of taste. It was ob served of Apelles's Venus, that her flesh seemed as if she had been nourished by roses his oratory would sometimes make one suspect that he eats potatoes, and drinks whisky."

Johnson and Boswell were conversing of public speaking. JOHNSON. "We must not estimate a man's powers by his being able or not able to deliver his sentiments in public. Isaac Hawkins Browne, one of the first wits of this country, got into parliament, and never opened his month. For my own part, I think it is more disgraceful never to try to speak, than to try it, and fail; as it is more disgraceful not to fight, than to fight, and be beaten." This argument appeared to Boswell fallacious; for if a man has not spoken, it may be said, that he would have done very well if he had tried; whereas, if he has tried and failed, there is nothing to be said for him he therefore asked, " Why then is it thought disgraceful for a man not to fight, and not disgraceful not to speak in public?" JOHNSON. "Because there may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in public, than want of resolution; he may have nothing to say (laughing): whereas, sir, you know courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other."

VOL. II.

F

At Mr. Thrale's, one evening, he repeated his usual parodoxical declamation against action in public speaking. "Action can have no effect upon reasonable minds. It may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument. If you speak to a dog, you use action; you hold up your hand thus, because he is a brute; and, in proportion as men are removed from brutes, action will have the less influence upon them." MRS. THRALE. "What then, sir, becomes of Demosthenes's saying-'Action, action, action?'” JOHNSON. "Demosthenes, madam, spoke to an assembly of brutes; to a barbarous people."

No. XII.

POLITICS.

BOSWELL having accompanied Johnson on a visit to Oxford, tells us, among other things, "In an evening we frequently took long walks from Oxford into the country, returning to supper. Once, in our way home, we viewed the ruins of the abbeys of Oseney and Rewley, near Oxford. After at least half an hour's silence, Johnson said, 'I viewed them with indignation! We had then a long conversation on Gothic buildings; and in talking of the form of old halls, he said, ' In these halls, the fire-place was anciently always in the middle of the room, till the Whigs removed it on one side.'"-An unquestionable improvement: though Johnson was so desperate a Tory, that it seems he would rather have been smothered with smoke, after the manner of our fore