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at least should feel, the want before they attempt to supply it. I may be allowed to allude here particularly to the word Auscult, and its subderivatives, auscultation, auscultatory; recently added to the nomenclature of medical men. Such words will point to an æra in science.

In my endeavours to collect and settle the vocabulary, I have enjoyed and availed myself of the large store of materials accumulated by Johnson and his editor Mr. Todd, the various supplements and provincial vocabularies, and the notes of commentators upon our older poets. In addition to these, a very abundant coacervation was methodically amassed for my own peculiar use. But I have directed my exertions rather to those sources which would enable me to ascertain the meaning, and deduce the application of the established body of our language, than to add to the number of those upon which, for the sake of distinction, I have so often bestowed the title of subderivative.* Our rules and principles of analogy are so well understood, that, by adhering to them, good sense ought never to be at a loss to make any serviceable addition to the abundant copiousness of our speech. Some, perhaps many, words of this description, may be found in this Dictionary, that have not hitherto been inserted in any other; and I believe that the same encrease may be affirmed with respect to words compounded with prepositions both of our own and of foreign growth. These latter, too, would readily admit of a multitude of their own kind.

I have still to give some reasons for the state of the vocabulary, as it will be found in the Dictionary. In the first place, then, words called Archaic, and which are now obsolete, have been diligently sought for; and all such, but no other, as could contribute any aid to the investigations of etymology, have been as carefully preserved. Provincial terms have occasionally been summoned to bring the weight of their testimony in support of the same cause; and the very useful little Glossaries, from the learned Ray to Mr. Brockett and Mr. Moore, have been duly consulted, and the assistance derived from them as duly avowed.

To acquire a knowledge of the rise and progress of philosophy and general literature in our country, we must toil through the dreary mazes of much false philosophy; and keep attention awake amid the oppressive dulness of much barbarous literature. Our language is an inseparable portion of the two. And we should remain in great ignorance of its history, and, if the expression may be allowed, of its rights and liberties also, if the vocabulary of a Dictionary were confined to those words only, to which the partial taste of more modern ages has allowed the character of classical. Each word will be found with a quotation subjoined

* Perhaps it is not sufficiently borne in mind, that these derivatives and compounds are the only kinds that we can create into new words, by new combinations. Primitiva vero penitus nova in linguam introduci non possunt:So says Valcknaer (Obs. 25). His reason is not very good, but it has passed upon his authority.

from some one author or more by whom it has been used, and the reader is as little obliged to believe for instance the fables of Pliny, as to adopt the language of his translator, or to imbibe the metaphysics of More and Cudworth, as to employ their scholastic terms.

Various pedantic and scholastic* terms have, then, been received, which have now grown into disuse: some, because they cast a light upon others still in continued currency; some, because they inform us of the topics which formerly employed the pens of philosophers and divines, whether they were engaged in amicable discussion, enforcing accredited doctrines, or, more commonly, in polemical strife—combating the friends or the antagonists of disputed theories. Some again,

"For all an example, a pattern to none," Swift.

because presenting instances of failure;—and even thus teaching a lesson of caution to ourselves; and all because they may extend our knowledge of the many "vicissitudes of mutation" which the language has sustained in its descent to these times; when change is at work upon it, with all the wild energies of a restless and indiscreet spirit of improvement.

There is another class of terms which must not be passed without a specific notice. They are," as Ben Jonson calls them, " a kind of composition" (he should rather have said of apposition)" wherein our English tongue is above all others very hardy and happy, joining together, after a most eloquent manner, sundry words of every kind of speech." Our poets and divines abound in words of this description, and the utmost care has been taken to remark upon those few that gain an import by their combination, which they do not possess when employed disconnectedly; and a full interpretation of their manner of signification has been reserved for the word Hyphen in the body of the Dictionary.†

There are other sorts of words of which it remains yet to speak, with relation to the propriety of admitting them into an English Dictionary, professing to be a Dictionary of Words merely, and not of Arts and Sciences.

The first, and indeed the only question, really is not whether there should be any Dictionary comprising these words; but whether there should be one Dictionary or two; whether technical and scientific words should not of themselves constitute an entire work.‡

⚫ Of all new coinages, words of this last description ought to be resisted most determinedly; because they have a tendency either to perpetuate old philosophical errors or to introduce new.

+ Some of our old writers carried this composition to an extreme, which modern ingenuity would be hard set to surpass. For instance,-Chapman translates μɛλippova oivov. Od. 7, 182,-Honey-sweetness-giving-minds wine.

: A Dictionary of scientific and technical terms could not be complete without diagrams; it could but define the word not describe the thing, without them.

That a separation into two would have a very strong claim to preference, may be maintained for these reasons:

1. Upon the unquestionable fact, that, by a division of labour, the several works would be better performed.

2. That those who are scientific and not literary, or who are literary and not scientific, might want the one and not the other: that, if there be but one book, to obtain what they do want, they must encumber themselves with what they do not: if there be two, one or both may be procured.

These appear to be sound and sufficient reasons against the union. In the mean time, I can only add that all the powers in my possession, all the means which I could control and manage in the exertion of them, have been held in requisition, and devoted to the performance of my own work. Another Dictionary of other words, must be the labour of another and a younger hand.*

With these impressions, I feel little disposed to offer upon this head any excuse for inconsistency and incompleteness. My sins of omissions must be ascribed to necessity on my part, and to a conviction that they ought to be supplied from another quarter. My sins of commission may be excused, because I have been the only sufferer; the public are gainers by the surplusage or over-measure and my acts and deeds, exhibited in proper place, may be regarded as patterns to follow, not examples to shun.

I have left the orthography and accentuation as I found them; though a few errors in the former, and some old usages in the latter, have been noted as they passed. Our antient authors (as Mr. Nares very truly observes) were so careless of Orthography, that it is not uncommon, in some of their writings, to find the same word spelt more ways than one in the course of a single page. In authors, more antient than he seems to have been acquainted with, this indifference may be found apparent in the very same sentence. There have been systems formed for an entire reformation, but all have perished. Johnson, who found our mode of writing to his time unsettled and fortuitous, reduced our vocabulary to some degree of uniformity, and I have already expressed my opinion of his success. Much may yet be done, without rendering the practice of preceding times obscure or unintelligible, and in the proper places will be found such improvements suggested, as seemed to be practicable without violent change.

* Opus exegi.—Plura et meliora faciat, qui potest. Ego, qui nec ab ætate, nec a fortuna vires sumere possum. in posterum libens abstinebo, moniti memor antiqui; Solve senescentem. Wachter. Epilogus.

† A few unintended omissions are supplied at the end of the 2nd volume, among which will be found the word— RETROSPECT.

The grammarian and the lexicographer have some duties in common, and there are some peculiar to each. The Dictionary has been confined within its own province. A complete History of the Language must be the work of their combined labours; that portion, which it is incumbent upon the lexicographer to perform, has already been insisted upon as a characteristic feature of this book; that which falls within the duties of the grammarian, the grammarian has yet to accomplish.

ӨАЛАТТА, ӨАЛАТТА.

I AM now approached to the final close of a work, which has occupied a large and important measure of my life. In the succession of years, during which I have been thus pursuing my slow but ceaseless journey, many of those, who, cotemporary with myself, had engaged in contributing to the construction of the Encyclopædia, men younger, and with a fair promise rather of reading my name in the daily notices of the dead, than of having their own perused by me, have dropped into the grave. Many, too, in closer and dearer connection have ceased to watch my progress, and confirm me in moments of weariness and depression. I have never been allowed to dismiss from memory, had I been inclined to do so, the premonition, which was forced upon my mind at the very outset of my career;-That the labours of the three chiefs of Etymological renown, who from the first to the last were to become my inseparable associates, were posthumous. That the Latin Etymologicon of Vossius was dedicated by his son to a friend of the father, as a work-jam olim a parente tibi promissum; that, for the English Etymologicon of Skinner, we are indebted to an anonymous friend; that Junius was ushered into the world under the editorial protection of Lye;-and that, moreover, the Saxon and Gothic Lexicon of Lye was destined to receive the same superintendent care from the hand of his Biographer Manning. Their productions, however, were happily in a state, or nearly so, fit for publication; but the Author of the Diversions of Purley has not left behind him any unwrought fragments to mitigate the sorrow, which every scholar must experience, that the hours of his twilight were suffered to expire in darkness, if not wholly unemployed, yet insufficiently directed to the completion of his work.

No man will now harbour any fear of degradation in the ranks of literature, because he has devoted his portion of ability and learning to the drudgery of a Dictionary: he will remember that Johnson for some years laboured to establish his name in the catalogue of Lexicographers;

and that the Philosopher of Wimbledon was known to have made some preparations for assuming the same character. But the Composer of this Dictionary may be arraigned for a vain glorious estimate of himself, his studies, and his book, if he ventures to express a sympathy in the feelings with which the Great Historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire describes himself to have been filled, when he had penned the last page of his immortal volumes. In some of his emotions I may be allowed to participate: not assuredly in the proud sentiment of established fame, and independent fortune: yet very sincerely in the consciousness, that, whatever may be the fate of the work, the life of the author must be short and precarious. I take leave, as he did, of an old, though I cannot add at all times an agreeable, companion. But, as the exercise of our faculties, either of body or mind, is a main ingredient in the constitution of human happiness, I should, I confess, if, like the historian, I were about to take an everlasting farewell of my book, scarcely possess the power to do so without some suggestions that might compel me to falter between gladness and regret. An English Dictionary, a Dictionary of any living language, is, however, a work so peculiarly calculated to invite, and even to exact, from its author the benefits of supervisal, that the fault will be my own, and the penalty also, if I allow my spirits to sink under the pressure of idleness. Beyond this exertion, however, my expectations do not pretend.

In conclusion-I cannot forbear to remark, that however toilsome in general, and however unproductive in part, may be the labours endured in the collection and arrangement of the materials for an English Dictionary, the Author of it has it in his power, at the present æra, to congratulate himself upon the enjoyment of a prospect, much more rich and spacious than could fall to the lot of the compiler of a similar work in any Language of the European Continent :

The world is all before him.

And, perhaps, no subject of philosophic contemplation, possessing a livelier interest, can be proposed to a thoughtful and enlightened mind: than a comparison of the field of renown, which even 240 years ago was sketched by the graphic powers of a very humble poet of our own country, with that over which the more lofty genius of the Roman Lyric bard extended its survey. When the former imagined himself soaring on wing, "non usitata, nec tenui,” he prescribes the shores of the Bosphorus, the Syrtes of Getulia, and the Hyperborean plains, to be the utmost confines of his flight; he was content that the Colchian and the Dacian should become familiar with his name, and that the "peritus Iber, Rhodanique potor" should rehearse Our Poet, Daniel,* animated probably by the spirit of discovery and general enter

his song.

* See the lines from him prefixed to this Preface.

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