The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes | Page 2

throw in my way any temptation to disturb the quiet of others by
censure, or my own by flattery.
I had read, indeed, of times, in which princes and statesmen thought it
part of their honour to promote the improvement of their native tongues;
and in which dictionaries were written under the protection of greatness.
To the patrons of such undertakings I willingly paid the homage of
believing that they, who were thus solicitous for the perpetuity of their
language, had reason to expect that their actions would be celebrated by
posterity, and that the eloquence which they promoted would be
employed in their praise. But I considered such acts of beneficence as
prodigies, recorded rather to raise wonder than expectation; and,
content with the terms that I had stipulated, had not suffered my
imagination to flatter me with any other encouragement, when I found
that my design had been thought by your Lordship of importance
sufficient to attract your favour.
How far this unexpected distinction can be rated among the happy
incidents of life, I am not yet able to determine. Its first effect has been
to make me anxious, lest it should fix the attention of the publick too
much upon me; and, as it once happened to an epick poet of France, by
raising the reputation of the attempt, obstruct the reception of the work.
I imagine what the world will expect from a scheme, prosecuted under

your Lordship's influence; and I know that expectation, when her wings
are once expanded, easily reaches heights which performance never
will attain; and when she has mounted the summit of perfection,
derides her follower, who dies in the pursuit.
Not, therefore, to raise expectation, but to repress it, I here lay before
your Lordship the plan of my undertaking, that more may not be
demanded than I intend; and that, before it is too far advanced to be
thrown into a new method, I may be advertised of its defects or
superfluities. Such informations I may justly hope, from the emulation
with which those, who desire the praise of elegance or discernment,
must contend in the promotion of a design that you, my Lord, have not
thought unworthy to share your attention with treaties and with wars.
In the first attempt to methodise my ideas I found a difficulty, which
extended itself to the whole work. It was not easy to determine by what
rule of distinction the words of this dictionary were to be chosen. The
chief intent of it is to preserve the purity, and ascertain the meaning of
our English idiom; and this seems to require nothing more than that our
language be considered, so far as it is our own; that the words and
phrases used in the general intercourse of life, or found in the works of
those whom we commonly style polite writers, be selected, without
including the terms of particular professions; since, with the arts to
which they relate, they are generally derived from other nations, and
are very often the same in all the languages of this part of the world.
This is, perhaps, the exact and pure idea of a grammatical dictionary;
but in lexicography, as in other arts, naked science is too delicate for
the purposes of life. The value of a work must be estimated by its use;
it is not enough that a dictionary delights the critick, unless, at the same
time, it instructs the learner; as it is to little purpose that an engine
amuses the philosopher by the subtilty of its mechanism, if it requires
so much knowledge in its application as to be of no advantage to the
common workman.
The title which I prefix to my work has long conveyed a very
miscellaneous idea, and they that take a dictionary into their hands,
have been accustomed to expect from it a solution of almost every
difficulty. If foreign words, therefore, were rejected, it could be little
regarded, except by criticks, or those who aspire to criticism; and
however it might enlighten those that write, would be all darkness to

them that only read. The unlearned much oftener consult their
dictionaries for the meaning of words, than for their structures or
formations; and the words that most want explanation are generally
terms of art; which, therefore, experience has taught my predecessors to
spread with a kind of pompous luxuriance over their productions.
The academicians of France, indeed, rejected terms of science in their
first essay, but found afterwards a necessity of relaxing the rigour of
their determination; and, though they would not naturalize them at once
by a single act, permitted them by degrees to settle themselves among
the natives, with little opposition; and it would surely be no proof of
judgment to imitate them in an