University of Virginia Library

III. The Fourth Folio Edition, 1773

The fourth edition of the Preface is a page-for-page reprint of the first-edition text, varying from it in 38 readings, of which 21 are accidental

and 17 substantive. Except for five of these readings, the text of the fourth edition does not repeat any of the variants introduced in the second-edition text nor any of the variants from the second edition introduced in the third. The five readings in which the second, third, and fourth editions agree against the first must therefore be examined in order to determine whether they imply dependence of the fourth-edition text on the second or third rather than, as the preponderance of the evidence would suggest, on the first. Four of the readings in which 1773 agrees with 1755-56 and 1765 are in accidentals: in (81) the correction of unreguarded to unregarded; in (55) the insertion of a necessary comma between to CHEER and its definition; in (94) substitution of a semicolon for a comma after Beni to separate the second and third of three long parallel clauses; and in (40) a correction in typographical style, changing an italic to to roman in the phrase "to break off" in conformity with the style in a list of examples. The fifth variant from the first-edition text in which the three later editions agree is a substantive change. In (92), as we have seen, Johnson originally said: In the second edition he had changed this to "that we may no longer yield the palm of philology without a contest to the nations of the continent"; this reading was repeated in 1765. The fourth edition reading is identical with the second, except that the phrase "without a contest" is set off with commas.

Do these five readings establish a textual connection between the second edition and the fourth, or between the third and the fourth? I do not think they do. The four changes in accidentals are all simple corrections of manifest errors, of the kind that could easily have been made by any careful workman, guided by the consistent practice in the rest of the text, whether or not he had a corrected copy before him. As to the alteration in (94), I think we must suppose either that Johnson in 1773 remembered having made this change in 1755 (and he may have done so because this is the beginning of the noble close of the Preface), or that he invented it anew (which he might easily have done, for once the need for some softening of the sentence is felt, the phrase inserted has a degree of inevitability). If we suppose instead that Johnson derived this reading from the second or third-edition text, we must suppose what is almost inconceivable—that in all the other instances listed above in which these texts vary from the first edition Johnson rejected the reading of the intermediary text and returned by pure chance to the readings of the first edition. The agreement

among the three later editions in these five places is to be attributed, therefore, not to a direct line of descent from one to another, but to the coincidence of simple and obvious corrections by compositors or proof-correctors (or, less likely, by Johnson) and to Johnson's chance recollection or repetition of one of his earlier revisions. The fourth-edition text is independently derived from the first edition.

The remaining 33 variations between the texts of the first and fourth editions may now be examined.[5] 17 affect the accidentals of the text.

Spelling: 1 change:

• (6) registred to registered a random normalization, probably not by Johnson; cf. registered (31).

Punctuation: 15 changes:

• (3) neglected, to neglected;
• (3) exuberance, to exuberance;
• (3) fashion, to fashion; these changes introduce heavier stops between long verb phrases in series, in accordance with the normal style of the Preface; cf. (1), (42), (62). They may be due to Johnson, but just as easily to a careful compositor or proofreader.
• (11) them away; to them away:
• (11) untouched: to untouched; these changes depart from Johnson's usual style. He regularly uses the colon, not only to introduce a series or an expansion, but to separate long complex clauses in which semicolons are used, or to separate clauses between which the connection is slight, where there is no conjunction and where we would normally use a period. Cf. for the first type, (4), (15), (17), (42), (51), (72), (86); for the second, (6), (17), (46), (48), (54), (65), (67), (92), (94). The colon is a heavier stop than the semicolon. In the sentence under consideration, the first ed. employs the two marks in the normal subordination; the fourth ed. reverses it.
• (16) been, perhaps, to been perhaps probably a printing-house change; Johnson usually encloses such parenthetical elements: cf. (18), (51), (61), (65), (88), (90).
• (21) and, though familiar to and though familiar probably a printing-house change; Johnson is usually careful to mark both ends of a qualifying element if he marks one. Cf. (28), (44).
• (31) fashion, or lust to fashion or lust probably a printing-house change. The pointing of the first edition text is at least consistent: ". . . words which our authours have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness, by compliance with fashion, or lust of innovation." If the comma is removed after fashion, that after languages should also be deleted. (Johnson uses no comma after vanity because it is not followed by a genitive phrase.)
• (41) Dictionaries subjoined: to Dictionaries subjoined;
• (42) grammatically considered: to grammatically considered;
• (45) settled meaning: to settled meaning;

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  a little rash of normalizations like those in (II); the compositor or proof-reader did not understand Johnson's use of the colon.
• (65) those quotations which to those quotations, which although Johnson is not perfectly consistent in his punctuation of restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, the first edition pointing seems more in keeping with his usual style.
• (72) ransack, to ransack; a change perhaps occasioned by a substantive revision; see the list below.
• (87) but a little, above to but a little above the first edition is clearly correct.
• (94) I wished to please, have sunk to I wished to please have sunk perhaps indifferent, although Johnson usually prefers the heavier pointing.

Capitalization: I change:

• (91) it remains to It remains Cf. the change made in the second edition at (20). Johnson seems to have been in the habit of beginning the answer to a question with a lower-case letter; this change is probably the compositor's.

As in the second edition, the changes in accidentals seem to be the occasional intrusion of the compositor or proof-reader. Johnson's revision was casual and did not extend to the minutiae of the text.

The text of the fourth edition contains 16 changes in the substantive readings of the first edition. Readers familiar with the Preface will recognize these, because they have been incorporated in the standard text; one or two of them, I think, should not be attributed to Johnson.

(2) The first edition reads:

(8) In 1755 Johnson writes that uncertain pronunciation is the source of

In 1773 the final relative pronoun is changed: "anomalous formations, that, being once incorporated. . . ." Johnson's use of that and which in the Preface follows no principle consistently, and it is accordingly difficult to fix the responsibility for this change. But the printers seem in general to have followed their copy closely, and I suspect that Johnson changed the relative to eliminate the repetition of which, from which a false parallelism might be inferred.

(15) Discussing the dependence of spelling on a writer's knowledge of the language from which English words are derived, Johnson concludes, in the first edition:

The 1773 text reads: "as one or another language is present to the writer." I do not see the motive for this change, unless "one or other" seemed archaic in 1773; but again, in view of the infrequency of compositorial intervention, I think the change should be attributed to Johnson unless there is a clear reason for assigning it to the printer.

(25) Defending himself against the charge of injustice to Junius as an etymologist, Johnson writes, in 1755:

By 1773 Johnson had perhaps become convinced that he could not expect from his readers enough Greek to follow him and Junius; at any rate he added a gloss after monos: "single or solitary, . . ."

(34) 1755:

The reading many sometimes is clearly faulty, although Johnson had let it slip past him when he revised the Preface for the second edition: many words cannot with propriety be sometimes omitted. In 1773 Johnson solved the difficulty by deleting many. But the error in the first edition must be accounted for. I suspect that Johnson originally wrote and may sometimes have been omitted, and that the first-edition compositor misread may as many. If this was the original reading, it gives a sense preferable to that which results from Johnson's deletion of many, for the fourth edition text makes it seem that Johnson knows which of these words have been omitted, whereas the point is clearly that he does not know. A bold editor might introduce may into the text.

(36) 1755:

1773 reads: "unless, by signifying rather habit or quality than action, . . . ." The qualities of the first edition conceals a distinction conveyed in Johnson's two examples, of which, in the 1773 text, habit (defined in the Dictionary as "a power or ability in man of doing any thing, when it has been acquired by frequent doing the same thing" [Locke]) is illustrated by thinking, and quality ("accomplishment; qualification") by pacing.

(40) 1755:

In 1773 "the signification of many verbs" is altered to "the signification of many words." This seems to be a compositor's error. This type of composition is confined to verbs, as is shown by the list of examples, all of which are verbs, and by Johnson's reference at the end of the paragraph to "combinations of verbs and particles."

(47) Johnson confesses that he has been unable to explain some words because he does not understand them. In the first edition he says:

For I may freely the 1773 text has I may surely. Johnson perhaps sought a more modest tone.

(69) 1755:

Johnson changed this in 1773 to read: This change eliminates an awkward shift in construction in the original text, where to perform . . . must be taken not as the final member of a series, which it appears at first to be, but as a summary phrase. In improving the syntax Johnson did not notice, or chose to disregard, the new implication of the sentence—that he had in fact settled the orthography, displayed the analogy, etc.—an implication denied in the second clause, in the rest of the paragraph, and in the two paragraphs that follow.

(72) 1755:

In 1773 the passage reads instead: The original reading is clear, and the change in 1773 produces some difficulty. In the first edition, prospect controls a series of four parallel elements—hours, recesses, treasures, and triumph. The with added before the obscure recesses in 1773 destroys this parallelism and appears to initiate a new one, less precise than the old, between prospect and recesses; and the added with must also be understood as preceding the treasures and the triumph, for Johnson, if he made this change, could not prefix a with to each of these because each is followed by a with-construction. This is all very awkward; it is also imprecise, for although Johnson could please himself in advance with the prospect of recesses of learning he intended to enter, he could not please himself with the recesses themselves, as the altered reading would have it, until he had entered them. If this is Johnson's change, he was careless, as he appears to have been nowhere else in the course of this revision. Despite the general accuracy of the compositor, therefore, I attribute this change to him rather than to Johnson.

(73) 1755:

In 1773 Johnson altered the ending to read "which would in time be ended, though not completed." This is an elegant change, and shows Johnson at his most fastidious. In the Dictionary to end is defined as "to terminate; to conclude; to cease; to fail," and to finish as "1. to bring to the end purposed; to complete. 2. to perfect; to polish to the excellency intended. 3. to end; to put an end to." The same nicety appears in the Advertisement Johnson composed for the 1773 edition: "Many are the works of human industry, which to begin and finish are hardly granted to the same man."

(74) 1755:

In 1773 ever shall is transposed, by Johnson, I presume, to shall ever.

(84) 1755:

In 1773: I am not sure what to make of this. It does not look like the compositor trying to repair a sentence he found difficult to understand. Perhaps Johnson in 1755 had in mind the hopes actually expressed by friends, and in 1773, these circumstances being long past, recast the sentence to give not only a better rhythm but a firmer contrast to his own shifting opinions as expressed in the next sentence.

(84) 1755:

In 1773 the lexicographer is made to imagine that he can "change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly" etc. The change, which I take to be Johnson's, heightens the vanity of the lexicographer and perfects the parallelism of the last two clauses.

(88) In 1755, Johnson, commenting on Swift's proposal that words should not be allowed to become obsolete, says:

The inversions at the end of this passage are changed in 1773 to the straightforward "when it has once become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing by unfamiliarity." Since Johnson's style in his later prose tends to be less artfully contrived than in his earlier writing, I take this change to be his.

(92) As already noted, Johnson in 1773, as in the second edition, softened

(94) 1755:

The rhythm and power of this noble passage are enhanced by Johnson's revision in 1773: he ends the first sentence with sorrow, deletes the and, and begins a new sentence with It.

On the basis of this comparison of the texts of the four editions of the Preface printed in Johnson's lifetime, the relationships among them may be summarized as follows:

• (1) the second edition, 1755-56, was printed from the first; there is no sign that Johnson or the compositor returned to the manuscript (and a strong sign that they did not; cf. the deletion in (38)).
• (2) the third edition, 1765, was printed from the second: wherever the second edition varies from the first, the third edition follows the second; when the third varies from the second, it never returns to a reading of the first; the third edition introduces no readings which can be attributed to Johnson.
• (3) the fourth edition, 1773, was printed from the first, with revisions by Johnson independent of those he introduced into the second-edition text: the fourth edition does not follow the third in any of its variations from the second, nor, with the exceptions already accounted for, does it follow the second in any of its variations from the first.

We have, then, three texts of the Preface—since the text of the third edition may be disregarded—which possess textual authority. The second and fourth editions present texts independently revised, and contain substantive changes of importance. It does not appear from the number of these substantive changes that Johnson's revision of the Preface for either edition was systematic; this fact, together with the nature of the changes in the accidentals of the texts, suggests that he did not extend his attention to the details of spelling and punctuation, and that the changes in the accidentals are probably not by Johnson. Nor can all the substantive revisions in the two editions be automatically ascribed to Johnson; most of them are surely his, but some, as I have tried to show, may be suspected.

We need not be surprised at Johnson's failure to recall, in 1773, the revisions he had made in the Preface late in 1755. During the intervening eighteen years he had, as he wrote to Boswell, "looked very little into" the Dictionary, [6] and he had been heavily occupied with other writing. And the revisions made in 1755 were not on the whole so striking—with a single exception, perhaps—as to stick for years in the mind of a man who wrote and revised much. Nor need we, on the other hand, be surprised that Johnson, even if he had forgotten the changes made in 1755, did not once more notice at least the errors he had then corrected, if not the elegancies he had added, and correct them again in 1773. Both revisions were rather casual performances, not at all like his thorough-going work on the Rambler. He evidently read rapidly through the text, mending or improving where something happened to catch his eye.

The two sets of revisions therefore complement each other. Each represents, for certain passages in the Preface, Johnson's "final intention." And the editorial procedure to be adopted in the light of these circumstances is clear. There is no ground for adopting, as the copy-text for an edition of the Preface, the text of the fourth edition. This has been the procedure followed in all editions since 1773, on the familiar theory that the last edition published in the author's lifetime is the one most likely to contain his final intentions with respect to the work.[7] Greg and Bowers have recently

demonstrated that even for works whose textual history is more normal than that of the Preface to the Dictionary this is an editorial theory certain to produce corrupt texts.[8] For the Preface this theory has led, in all modern texts, to the exclusion of half of all the revisions made by Johnson, to the perpetuation of errors and stylistic defects which he had carefully expunged, and to the omission of several stylistic elegancies which he had added. Future editors must therefore adopt the text of the first edition as their copy-text and introduce into it the two sets of Johnsonian revisions from the second and fourth editions, together with such changes in the accidentals from these texts as seem necessary for correctness or consistency. The editor will have to determine for himself which of the changes made in substantive readings in the second and fourth editions are authoritative; I have tried to indicate which are Johnson's, but I do not suppose that I have chosen correctly in every case. But the editor cannot avoid the responsibility of making a choice. The resulting text will be a composite, but only a composite text can reflect accurately the composite of intentions which influenced Johnson in 1755 and 1773.