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."

"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_." Preface to
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary.

[44] See Swift's letter to Lord Oxford for the institution of an
academy to improve and fix the English language.

[45] The great French and Italian Dictionaries were not the
productions of an individual, but were compiled by a body of
Academicians in each country.

[46] "In times and regions so disjoined from each other, that there
can scarcely be imagined any communication of sentiments, either by
commerce or tradition, has prevailed a general and uniform expectation
of propitiating GOD by corporal austerities, of anticipating his
vengeance by voluntary inflictions, and appeasing his justice by a
speedy and cheerful submission to a less penalty when a greater is
incurred."
_Rambler_, No. 110.

[47] The style of the _Ramblers_ seem to have been formed on that of
Sir Thomas Brown's _Vulgar Errors_ and _Christian Morals_.

"But ice is water congealed by the frigidity of the air, whereby it
acquireth no new form, but rather a consistence or determination of
its defluency, and amitteth not its essence, but condition of
fluidity. Neither doth there any thing properly conglaciate but water,
or watery humidity, for the determination of quicksilver is properly
fixation, that of milk coagulation, and that of oil and unctuous
bodies only incrassation."--Is this written by Brown or Johnson?

[48] In the _Ramblers_ the abstract too often occurs instead of the
concrete;--one of Dr. Johnson's peculiarities.

[49] See Victoria's Letter, RAMBLER, No. 130.--"I was never permitted
to sleep till I had passed thr