_lessus_,
in the twelve tables, means a _funeral song_, or _mourning garment_; and
Aristotle doubts whether [Greek: oureus] in the Iliad, signifies a
_mule_, or _muleteer_, I may surely, without shame, leave some
obscurities to happier industry, or future information.

The rigour of interpretative lexicography requires that _the
explanation_, and _the word explained, should be always reciprocal_;
this I have always endeavoured, but could not always attain. Words are
seldom exactly synonymous; a new term was not introduced, but because
the former was thought inadequate: names, therefore, have often many
ideas, but few ideas have many names. It was then necessary to use the
proximate word, for the deficiency of single terms can very seldom be
supplied by circumlocution; nor is the inconvenience great of such
mutilated interpretations, because the sense may easily be collected
entire from the examples.

In every word of extensive use, it was requisite to mark the progress of
its meaning, and show by what gradations of intermediate sense it has
passed from its primitive to its remote and accidental signification; so
that every foregoing explanation should tend to that which follows, and
the series be regularly concatenated from the first notion to the last.

This is specious, but not always practicable; kindred senses may be so
interwoven, that the perplexity cannot be disentangled, nor any reason
be assigned why one should be ranged before the other. When the radical
idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive
series be formed of senses in their nature collateral? The shades of
meaning sometimes pass imperceptibly into each other, so that though on
one side they apparently differ, yet it is impossible to mark the point
of contact. Ideas of the same race, though not exactly alike, are
sometimes so little different, that no words can express the
dissimilitude, though the mind easily perceives it, when they are
exhibited together; and sometimes there is such a confusion of
acceptations, that discernment is wearied and distinction puzzled, and
perseverance herself hurries to an end, by crowding together what she
cannot separate.

These complaints of difficulty will, by those that have never considered
words beyond their popular use, be thought only the jargon of a man
willing to magnify his labours, and procure veneration to his studies by
involution and obscurity. But every art is obscure to thos