the rulers of the world as a cabinet of gems, open and belonging to them all. Whatever is the fate of other countries, whatever changes may be introduced, whatever laws imposed, whatever tributes exacted, she should preserve her lineaments uneffaced. Her ancient institutions and magistracies should be sanctioned to her, in gratitude for the inestimable blessings she has conferred on us. There is no more danger that republicanism would be contagious from it, than from a medal of Cimon or Epaminondas. To Greece is owing the conversation we hold together; to Greece is owing the very city in which we hold it, its wealth, its power, its equity, its liberality. These are among her earlier benefits: her later are not less. We owe to her the better part of that liturgy by which the divine wrath (let us hope) may be averted from the offences of our prosperity.

Tooke. I would rather see this regeneration, than Viscount Corinth or Marquis Lacedæmon, than conduct to her carriage the Duchess Enoanda, or even than dance with Lady Ogygia or Lady Peribœa. We may expect the worthy baronet, Sir Acamas Erechthyoniades, High Sheriff of Mycenæ, if more fashionable systems should prevail, to be created Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of that county.

Johnson. How much better and how much easier is it to remove the dirt and rubbish from around this noble statue, and to fix on it again the arm that is broken off and lies under it, than to carve it anew into some Gothic form, and to set it up in the weedy garden of an ignorant and drunken neighbor!

Tooke. The liberation of Greece is the heirloom of our dreams, and comes not under the cognizance even of imagination when awake. To suppose that she could resist the power of Turkey one year, would be to suppose her more valiant and heroic than she ever was. If this were possible, the most despotic governments, the most friendly to her enslaver, the most indifferent to glory, the most deaf to honor, the very dead to Christianity, would lend an arm to support and save her. Nothing could be more politic, for England in particular, than to make her what Rhodes was formerly, what Malta should now be, — equipped if not for the faith, equipped and always under sail against piracy; and religion would not induce her, as it would the knights of those islands, to favor the Catholics in case of war.

Johnson. Here our political views converge. Publish your thoughts; proclaim them openly: such as these you may. Tooke. It would cost me three thousand pounds to give them the requisite weight; and I believe there are some other impediments to my entrance into the House of Commons. Nothing is fitted to the hands of a king's minister but what is placed in them by a member of that honorable house. They take my money, which serves them little, while my advice, which might do some good, they would reject disdainfully. As where there is omniscience there is omnipotence, so wisdom (we seem to think) is always in proportion to power. A great man feels no want of it; and faulty arguments are only to be discovered through a hole in the dress.

Johnson. If your observations were always as just and your arguments as innocent, I never should decline your conversation; but, on the contrary, I should solicit from you a catalogue of such peculiarities and defects as a profound insight into our language, and a steady investigation of its irregularities and intricacies, have enabled you to remark.

Tooke. And now, Doctor Johnson, you are at last in goodhumor; I hope to requite your condescension by an observation more useful than any I have yet submitted to you. Annibal Caracci, I know not whether in advice or in reproof, said to a scholar, What you do not understand you must darken. Are not we also of the Bologna school, my dear Doctor? Do not we treat men and things in general as Caracci would have the canvas treated? What we cannot so well manage or comprehend, we throw into a corner or into outer darkness. I do not hate, believe me, nor dislike you for your politics: whatever else they prove, they prove your constancy and disinterestedness. Nor do I supplicate you for a single one more of those kind glances which you just now vouchsafed me. The fixedness of your countenance, frowning as it is, shows at least that you attend to me, which, from a man of your estimation in the world, is no slight favor. Contented as I ought to be with it, I would yet entreat for others in the same condition, that you may be pleased to consider those writers whose sentiments are unpopular, as men walking away spontaneously from the inviting paths of Fortune, and casting up the sum of an account which is never to be paid or presented.

Johnson. I did not think there was so much wisdom

in you.

Tooke. Nor was there until this conversation and this strong hand created it.

Johnson. How

and so heartily?

have I then shaken hands with him?

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.

Our

Tooke. Expect then a circuitous and dodging one. 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 cannot be much interested by our conversation.

But as our

Tooke. That must entirely depend on you. 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.

Tooke. True; and hence a vulgar error in the learned. A sportsman 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 had 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 cannot 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 authorize 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.

Fohnson (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.

A

Tooke. We will begin our amicable engagement in the same manner as hostilities in the field are usually begun. few straggling troops fire away first, from hedges and bushes. As far indeed as I am concerned, there will be no order