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.
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