In thus applying these lines I mean the servitude to which any rational man degrades his intellect, when he submits to receive an opinion from the dictation of another, upon a point whereon he is just as capable of judging for himself;- the intellectual servitude of being told by Mr. A., B., or C. whether he is to like a book or not, or why he is to like it: and the folly of supposing that the man who writes anonymously, is on that very account entitled to more credit for judgment, erudition, and integrity, than the author who comes forward in his own person, and stakes his character upon what he advances.

All Readers, however, thank Heaven, and what is left among us of that best and rarest of all senses called Common Sense, all Readers, however, are not critical. There are still some who are willing to be pleased, and thankful for being pleased; and who do not think it necessary that they should be able to parse their pleasure, like a lesson, and give a rule or a reason why they are pleased, or why they ought not to be pleased. There are still readers who have never read an Essay upon Taste; and if they take my advice, they never will; for they can no more improve their taste by so doing, than they could improve their appetite or their digestion by studying a cookery-book. I have something to say to all classes of Readers; and, therefore, having thus begun to speak of one, with that class I will proceed. It is to the youthful part of my lectors (why not lectors as well as auditors?) it is virginibus puerisque that I now address myself. Young Readers, you whose hearts are open, whose understandings are not yet hardened, and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor encrusted by the world, take from me a better rule than any professors of criticism will teach you!

Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? Has it tended to make you dissatisfied and impatient under the

control of others; and disposed you to relax in that self-government, without which both the law of God and man tell us there can be no virtue and consequently no happiness? Has it attempted to abate your admiration and reverence for what is great and good, and to diminish in you the love of your country and your fellow-citizens? Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities? Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and shocked the heart with what is monstrous? Has it disturbed the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted in the human soul? If so if you are conscious of all or any of these effects, — or if, having escaped from all, you have felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, throw the book in the fire, whatever name it may bear in the title-page! Throw it in the fire, young man, though it should have been the gift of a friend!. young lady, away with the whole set, though it should be the prominent feature of a rosewood bookcase !

XXIX.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

(1775-1864.)

DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN.

[Written about 1824.]

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 originally earlier, being the comparative of rathe; the "rathe primrose" of the poet3 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 rightspelling?

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

3 From MILTON's Lycidas, 142.