Books: Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language
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Samuel Johnson >> Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language
There is another cause of alteration more prevalent than any other,
which yet in the present state of the world cannot be obviated. A
mixture of two languages will produce a third distinct from both,
and they will always be mixed, where the chief part of education,
and the most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient or
in foreign tongues. He that has long cultivated another language,
will find its words and combinations croud upon his memory; and haste
and negligence, refinement and affectation, will obtrude borrowed
terms and exotick expressions.
The great pest of speech is frequency of translation. No book
was ever turned from one language into another, without imparting
something of its native idiom; this is the most mischievous and
comprehensive innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and
the fabrick of the tongue continue the same, but new phraseology
changes much at once; it alters not the single stones of the building,
but the order of the columns. If an academy should be established
for the cultivation of our stile, which I, who can never wish to
see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will
hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and
dictionaries, endeavour, with all their influence, to stop the
licence of translatours, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be
suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.
If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but
to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses
of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that
we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care,
though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments,
have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved
our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.
In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature forbids
to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labour of years,
to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm
of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the continent.
The chief glory of every people arises from its authours: whether
I shall add any thing by my own writings to the reputation of
English literature, must be left to time: much of my life has been
lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away;
and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was
passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or
ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations, and distant ages,
gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the
teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories
of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and
to Boyle.
When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on my book,
however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of
a man that has endeavoured well. That it will immediately become
popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and
risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was
ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden
ignorance in contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail,
and there never can be wanting some who distinguish desert; who
will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be
perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some words are
budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent
upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be
sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can
express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that
a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and
sometimes faint with weariness under a task, which Scaliger compares
to the labours of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious is
not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden
fits of inadvertency will surprize vigilance, slight avocations
will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken
learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory
at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive
readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts tomorrow.
In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let
it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though
no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the authour, and the
world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of
that which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it,
that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of
the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the
soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick
bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and
in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to
observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have
only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto
completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed,
and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive
ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge, and
co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians, did not secure
them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied criticks of France,
when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to
change its oeconomy, and give their second edition another form,
I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which,
if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail
me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to
please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are
empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity,
having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
THE END