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. 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.'

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.

We went to evening prayers at St. Clement's, at seven, and then parted.

On Sunday, April 20, being Easter-day, after attending solemn service
at St. Paul's, I came to Dr. Johnson, and found Mr. Lowe, the painter,
sitting with him. Mr. Lowe mentioned the great number of new buildings
of late in London, yet that Dr. Johnson had observed, that the number of
inhabitants was not increased. JOHNSON. Why, Sir, the bills of mortality
prove that no more people die n