Mr. Walker, the celebrated master of elocution, came in, and then we went up stairs into the study. I asked him if he had taught many clergymen.
JOHNSON. 'I hope not.'
WALKER. 'I have taught only one, and he is the best reader I ever heard, not by my teaching, but by his own natural talents.'
JOHNSON. 'Were he the best reader in the world, I would not have it told that he was taught.'
Here was one of his peculiar prejudices. Could it be any disadvantage to the clergyman to have it known that he was taught an easy and graceful delivery?
BOSWELL. 'Will you not allow, Sir, that a man may be taught to read well?'
JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, so far as to read better than he might do without being taught, yes. Formerly it was supposed that there was no difference in reading, but that one read as well as another.'
BOSWELL. 'It is wonderful to see old Sheridan as enthusiastick about oratory as ever,'
WALKER. 'His enthusiasm as to what oratory will do, may be too great: but he reads well.'
JOHNSON. 'He reads well, but he reads low; and you know it is much easier to read low than to read high; for when you read high, you are much more limited, your loudest note can be but one, and so the variety is less in proportion to the loudness. Now some people have occasion to speak to an extensive audience, and must speak loud to be heard.'
WALKER. 'The art is to read strong, though low.'
Talking of the origin of language; JOHNSON. 'It must have come by inspiration. A thousand, nay, a million of children could not invent a language. While the organs are pliable, there is not understanding enough to form a language; by the time that there is understanding enough, the organs are become stiff. We know that after a certain age we cannot learn to pronounce a new language. No foreigner, who comes to England when advanced in life, ever pronounces English tolerably well; at least such instances are very rare. When I maintain that language must have come by inspiration, I do not mean that inspiration is required for rhetorick, and all the beauties of language; for when once man has language, we can conceive that he may gradually form modifications of it.
I mean only that inspiration seems to me to be necessary to give man the faculty of speech; to inform him that he may have speech; which I think he could no more find out without inspiration, than cows or hogs would think of such a faculty.'
WALKER. 'Do you think, Sir, that there are any perfect synonimes in any language?'
JOHNSON. 'Originally there were not; but by using words negligently, or in poetry, one word comes to be confounded with another.'
He talked of Dr. Dodd. 'A friend of mine, (said he,) came to me and told me, that a lady wished to have Dr. Dodd's picture in a bracelet, and asked me for a motto. I said, I could think of no better than Currat Lex {“The law must take its course.” – Editor}. I was very willing to have him pardoned, that is, to have the sentence changed to transportation: but, when he was once hanged, I did not wish he should be made a saint.'
Mrs. Burney, wife of his friend Dr. Burney, came in, and he seemed to be entertained with her conversation.
Garrick's funeral was talked of as extravagantly expensive. Johnson, from his dislike to exaggeration, would not allow that it was distinguished by any extraordinary pomp.
'Were there not six horses to each coach?' said Mrs. Burney.
JOHNSON. Madam, 'there were no more six horses than six phoenixes.'
{Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 169), wrote on the day of the funeral: 'I do think the pomp of Garrick's funeral perfectly ridiculous. It is confounding the immense space between pleasing talents and national services.' – Editor}
Mrs. Burney wondered that some very beautiful new buildings should be erected in Moorfields, in so shocking a situation as between Bedlam and St. Luke's Hospital; and said she could not live there.
JOHNSON. 'Nay, Madam, you see nothing there to hurt you. You no more think of madness by having windows that look to Bedlam, than you think of death by having windows that look to a church-yard.'
MRS. BURNEY. 'We may look to a church-yard, Sir; for it is right that we should be kept in mind of death.'
JOHNSON. 'Nay, Madam, if you go to that, it is right that we should be kept in mind of madness, which is occasioned by too much indulgence of imagination. I think a very moral use may be made of these new buildings: I would have those who have heated imaginations live there, and take warning.'
MRS. BURNEY. 'But, Sir, many of the poor people that are mad, have become so from disease, or from distressing events. It is, therefore, not their fault, but their misfortune; and, therefore, to think of them is a melancholy consideration.'
Time passed on in conversation till it was too late for the service of the church at three o'clock. I took a walk, and left him alone for some time; then returned, and we had coffee and conversation again by ourselves.
(classix comix™ is made possible in part through the generous assistance of the Bob’s Bowery Bar Fund for the Unremunerative Arts: “Are you exhausted from another hard day at the factory or office, or perhaps on the docks or in the abattoirs of our mighty metropolis? Finding it just a little hard to get into the so-called ‘holiday spirit’?
Why not do as old Horace does on a daily basis, and take advantage of Bob’s Bowery Bar’s vaunted happy hour? Drop in between the hours of 4pm and 7pm Monday through Friday, and avail yourself of an imperial pint of Bob’s world-renowned basement-brewed bock at half-price, and try a sampling from a rotating menu of proletarian-affordable bar snacks such as fresh-from-the-oven hot cross buns ‘n’ red-eye gravy, organic pigs-in-the-blanket, Uneeda Biscuits ‘n’ peanut butter ‘n’ house-made lingonberry jam, and – my personal favorite – Bob’s Mom’s BLT: four thick rashers of house-cured free-range bacon laid between two generously-buttered slabs of crusty toasted sourdough loaf, with fresh-from-the hothouse romaine lettuce and juicy tomato!”
– Horace P. Sternwall, host and narrator of Bob’s Bowery Bar Presents Philip Morris Commander’s “Blanche Weinberg, Lady Psychiatrist”, broadcast live 8pm Sundays {EST} exclusively on the Dumont Television Network. This week’s play: “Christmas is Not Merry for the Depressed”, by Herbert P. Stubbins, starring Kitty Carlisle as “Dr. Blanche”, featuring special guest star Dana Andrews as “Mr. Angstrom”.)
part 240
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