Many terms appropriated to particular occupations, though necessary
and significant, are undoubtedly omitted, and of the words most
studiously considered and exemplified, many senses have escaped
observation.

Yet these failures, however frequent, may admit extenuation and
apology. To have attempted much is always laudable, even when the
enterprise is above the strength that undertakes it: to rest below
his own aim is incident to every one whose fancy is active, and whose
views are comprehensive; nor is any man satisfied with himself because
he has done much, but because he can conceive little. When first I
engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things
unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I
should revel away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of
northern learning which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with
which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my
labor, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions
to mankind. When I had thus inquired into the original of words, I
resolved to show likewise my attention to things; to pierce deep into
every science, to inquire the nature of every substance of which
I inserted the name, to limit every idea by a definition strictly
logical, and exhibit every production of art or nature in an accurate
description, that my book might be in place of all other dictionaries
whether appellative or technical. But these were the dreams of a poet
doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. I soon found that it is too
late to look for instruments, when the work calls for execution, and
that whatever abilities I had brought to my task, with those I must
finally perform it. To deliberate whenever I doubted, to inquire
whenever I was ignorant, would have protracted the undertaking without
end, and, perhaps, without much improvement; for I did not find by
my first experiments, that what I had not of my own was easily to be
obtained: I saw that one inquiry only gave occasion to another, that
book referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and
to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to pursue
perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the
sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest,
was still beheld at the same distance from them.

I then contracted my design, determining to confide in myself, and
no longer to solicit auxiliar