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As in David Nichol Smith's discovery of a manifestly Johnsonian sentence first introduced into the Preface to Shakespeare in the Johnson-Steevens edition of 1778: to the middle of the paragraph (beginning "But the admirers of this great poet") in which he opens the discussion of Shakespeare's quibbles, Johnson added this sentence, "What he does best, he soon ceases to do" (see Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. Raleigh [Oxford, 1931], pp. 207-208). Unfortunately, most modern editors have not added this sentence to the text.

Detailed references to the text of the Preface are difficult to make because of the length of the folio pages. In subsequent references in this paper I have therefore numbered the paragraphs of the Preface, following the practice of the Hill-Powell edition of Boswell's Life. The paragraph number is inclosed in parentheses: thus (74) par. 74.

In "Some Emendations in the Text of Johnson's Preface to the Dictionary," forthcoming in RES, I have given at greater length my reasons for conjecturing semi for fair.

Spelling: authours to authors (27), (63), (65), and (67); characteristicks to characteristics (38). Authour is the normal spelling throughout the Preface. Johnson regularly used the -ick spelling in this text: cf. domestick (12), fabrick (20), eccentrick (88), criticks (94), etc. Punctuation: myself, to myself (5); breadth to breadth, (9); dictionary, to dictionary (45). The first of these substitutes a lighter for Johnson's customarily heavier punctuation; the second is a clear error; the third, by substituting a lighter punctuation, obscures the syntax. Compositor's errors: existence of words to existence words (59); purposed to proposed (70); appear to be to appear to (74); versed in the school philosophy to versed in school philosophy (74). All of these are obviously errors except the change in (70); but Johnson's meaning in that paragraph demands the meaning of purposed, "to intend; to design; to resolve."

In the lists which follow it is to be remembered that the second and third editions read with the first.

Life, II, 205; 24 February 1773.

The latest editor of the Preface, John Crow, recognizes the main facts concerning Johnson's revisions, for he says: "Johnson's thoughts, second, third, and fourth, are difficult to trace. The second and third editions of the Dictionary contain corrections and some of them are obviously desirable. The fourth edition is the last corrected by Johnson, but it is evident that he made the corrections for this in a copy of the first edition and failed to incorporate some of the improvements of the second and third editions" (Johnson: prose and poetry, selected by Mona Wilson [London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1950], p. 11). Despite this statement, Crow prints the text of the fourth edition. And his statement of the facts is not entirely accurate: the third edition contains no authoritative corrections not found in the second, and Johnson in revising the text for the fourth edition did not incorporate any of the improvements he had made in the second edition.

See W. W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text," Studies in Bibliography, III (1950), 19-36, and Fredson Bowers, "Current Theories of Copy-text, with an Illustration from Dryden," MP, XLVIII (1950), 12-20. Although I have not planned it as such, the present case may be regarded as another illustration of the correctness of the editorial procedure advocated in these two papers.