Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
By Samuel Johnson
It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life,
to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the
prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise;
to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where
success would have been without applause, and diligence without
reward.
Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom
mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science,
the pionier of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear
obstructions from the paths through which Learning and Genius press
forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the
humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other authour
may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape
reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted
to very few.
I have, notwithstanding this discouragement, attempted a dictionary
of the English language, which, while it was employed in the
cultivation of every species of literature, has itself been hitherto
neglected; suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into
wild exuberance; resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion; and
exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation.
When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our speech
copious without order, and energetick without rules: wherever
I turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled, and
confusion to be regulated; choice was to be made out of boundless
variety, without any established principle of selection; adulterations
were to be detected, without a settled test of purity; and modes
of expression to be rejected or received, without the suffrages of
any writers of classical reputation or acknowledged authority.
Having therefore no assistance but from general grammar, I applied
myself to the perusal of our writers; and noting whatever might be
of use to ascertain or illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated
in time the materials of a dictionary, which, by degrees, I reduced
to method, establishing to myself, in the progress of the work,
such rules as experience and analogy suggested to me; experience,
which practice and observation were continually increasing; and
analogy, which, though in some words obscure, was evident in others.
In adjusting the ORTHOGRAPHY, which has been to this time unsettled
and fortuitous, I found it necessary to distinguish those irregularities
that are inherent in our tongue, and perhaps coeval with it, from
others which the ignorance or negligence of later writers has
produced. Every language has its anomalies, which, though inconvenient,
and in themselves once unnecessary, must be tolerated among the
imperfections of human things, and which require only to be registered,
that they may not be increased, and ascertained, that they may not
be confounded: but every language has likewise its improprieties and
absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct
or proscribe.