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The Works of Samuel Johnson ...: Miscellaneous pieces.
The Works of Samuel Johnson Miscellaneous pieces Author:Samuel Johnson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FOURTH EDITION OF THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY". Many are the works of human industry, which to begin and finish are hardly granted... more » to the same man. He that undertakes to compile a dictionary, undertakes thati which, if it comprehends the full extent of his design, he knows himself unable to perform. Yet his labours, though deficient, may be useful, and with the hope of this inferiour praise, he must incite his activity, and solace his weariness. Perfection is unattainable, but nearer and nearer approaches may be made; and, finding my Dictionary about to be reprinted, I have endeavoured, by a revisal, to make it less reprehensible. I will not deny that I found many parts requiring emendation, and many more capable of improvement. Many faults I have corrected, some superfluities I have tafcen away, and some deficiencies I have supplied. I have methodised some parts that were disordered, and illuminated some that were obscure. Yet the changes or additions bear a very small proportion to the whole. The critick will now have less to object, but the student who has bought any of the former copies needs not repent; he will not, without nice collation, perceive how they differ; and usefulness seldom depends upon little things. For negligence or deficience, I have, perhaps, not need of more apology than the nature of the work will furnish: I have left that inaccurate which never was made exact, and that .imperfect which never was completed. 1' Published in folio, 1773. PREFACE TO THE OCTAVO EDITION OF Till ENGLISH DICTIONARY'. Having been long employed in the study and cultivation of the English language, I lately published a dictionary, like those compiled by the academies of Italy and France, for the use of such as aspire to exact...« less