of the continent. The chief glory of every people arises from its authors: 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 labors 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 endeavored 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 into 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 labors 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 surprise 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 to-morrow.

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted,

b

I

SAMUEL JOHNSON

let it not be forgotten that much likewise is per and though no book was ever spared out of interes the author, and the world is little solicitous to mow whet proceed the faults of that which it condemns yet gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Diy was written with little assistance of the learned, and writt any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in s row. It may repress the triumph of malignant cre edserve, that if our language is not here fully displayed Þave only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongs, 27 immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be ye after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of Italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty ye had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change economy, and give their second edition another form, 1: surely de contented without the praise of perfection, wh it I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what would avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dis miss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hot from censure or from praise. grave, and

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL
OF CHESTERFIELD

MY LORD:

February 7, 1755

I HAVE lately been informed by the proprietor of The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recom mended to the public, were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

'hen, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited r Lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, he enchantment of your address; and I could not forbear vish that I might boast myself 'Le vainqueur du vainqueur a terre'; that I might obtain that regard for which I saw world contending; but I found my attendance so little enraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to tinue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in blic, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a reed and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, : it ever so little.

Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited

your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; iring which time I have been pushing on my work through ifficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have rought it at last to the verge of publication, without one ct of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had 1 Patron before.

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks.

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, My Lord, Your Lordship's most humble,

Most obedient servant,

SAM. JOHNSON.

PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE

T

BY SAMUEL JOHNSON. (1765)

HAT praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.

Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead, we rate them by his best.

To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared; and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep, or a mountain high,

without the knowledge of many mountains, and many rivers; so in the productions of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the first building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or square; but whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new-name his characters, and paraphrase his senti

ments.

The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood.

The Poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick of merriment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enemies has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity; but are read without any other reason than the