' Johnson called this 'modern
cant[559].'
I perceived that he pronounced the word _heard_, as if spelt with a
double _e, heerd_, instead of sounding it _herd_, as is most usually
done. He said, his reason was, that if it was pronounced _herd_, there
would be a single exception from the English pronunciation of the
syllable _ear_, and he thought it better not to have that exception.
He praised Grainger's _Ode on Solitude_, in Dodsley's _Collection_, and
repeated, with great energy, the exordium:--
'O Solitude, romantick maid,
Whether by nodding towers you tread;
Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom,
Or hover o'er the yawning tomb;
Or climb the Andes' clifted side,
Or by the Nile's coy source abide;
Or, starting from your half-year's sleep,
From Hecla view the thawing deep;
Or, at the purple dawn of day,
Tadnor's marble waste survey[560]';
observing, 'This, Sir, is very noble.'
In the evening our gentleman-farmer, and two others, entertained
themselves and the company with a great number of tunes on the fiddle.
Johnson desired to have 'Let ambition fire thy mind[561],' played over
again, and appeared to give a patient attention to it; though he owned
to me that he was very insensible to the power of musick[562].
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