Nobody can deny the miraculous labour which that work must have required: yet now, when enthusiasm has somewhat abated, and no danger exists of being clapper-clawed by the Doctor himself, some ungrateful English grammarians have presumed to assert that, under the gaberdine of so great an authority, any body is lawfully entitled to coin any English word he chooses out of any foreign language he thinks proper; and that we may thus tune up our vocabulary to the key of a lingua franca, an assemblage of all tongues, sounds, and idioms, dead or living. It has also been asserted, since his decease, that the Doctor’s logic is frequently false both in premises and conclusion, his ethics erroneous, his philosophy often unintelligible, and his diction generally bombastic. However, there are so many able and idle gentlemen of law, physic, and divinity, amply educated, with pens stuck behind their ears ready for action, who are much better skilled in the art and practice of criticism than I am, that I shall content myself with commenting on one solitary word out of forty thousand, which word not only bears strongly on my own tenets and faith, but also affects one of the most extraordinary occurrences of my life.
This comprehensive and important word, (which has upon occasion puzzled me more than any other in the English language,) is “superstition:”—whereof one of the definitions given by the Doctor, in his Lexicon, appears to be rather inconsiderate, namely,—“religion without morality.”—Now, I freely and fully admit that I am superstitious, yet I think it is rather severe and somewhat singular in the Doctor to admit my religion and extinguish my morality, which I always considered as marching hand in hand—or, in truth, I thought the latter should go foremost.
When Dr. Johnson began to learn his own ideas of morality does not appear (certainly not from his friend Savage):—I suppose not until he got an honorary degree from the pedants of Oxford. Collegiate degrees in general, however, work no great reformation, I am inclined to believe, in morality; at least I am certain that when I became a Doctor of Laws I did not feel my morals in the least improved by my diploma. I wish the candid Boswell had mentioned the precise epocha of the Doctor’s reformation (for he admits him to have been a little wild in his youth); and then we might have judged under what state of mind he gave the strange definition of “religion without morality.”
For myself, I consider faith, grounded on the phenomena of Nature, not the faith of sectarianism or fanaticism, as the true source and foundation of morality;—and morality as the true source and foundation of religion.
No human demonstration can cope with that presented by the face of Nature. What proof so infallible as that the sun produces light and heat and vegetation?[[23]]—that the tides ebb and flow—that the thunder rolls—that the lightning flashes—that the planets shine?[[24]] Who can gaze on the vast orb of day without feeling that it is the visible demonstration of a superior Being, convincing our reason and our senses, and even the scanty reason of illiterate savages?
[23]. The following lines are by Miss M. Tylden, the young poetess whom I have before mentioned, and shall again allude to more fully. In my humble opinion, there are not fourteen consecutive lines in the English language superior in true sublimity both of thought and language:
The sun is in the empire of his light,
Throned in the mighty solitude of heaven:
He seems the visible Omnipotent