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The Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language: Johnson's Revision and the Establishment of the Text by W. R. Keast
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The Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language: Johnson's Revision and the Establishment of the Text
by
W. R. Keast

Several studies of Johnson's revisions of his publications have disposed of the old belief that his care for his writings ceased when they originally left his pen. The interest of these studies has been chiefly in enabling us to see the process by which the final form of each text—the form in which we are familiar with it—was attained; only rarely has a knowledge of Johnson's revisions enabled editors to arrive at readings superior to those in the traditional texts.[1] Johnson's revisions of his Preface to the Dictionary of the English Language present a more complex and instructive case. While noteworthy, like his other revisions, in displaying a great stylist at work, these revisions have an additional significance for the establishment of the true text of the Preface. For Johnson revised the Preface twice, making an independent set of alterations each time. And only one of these sets of revisions has been incorporated in the versions of the Preface printed since the eighteenth century.

Four folio editions of the Dictionary appeared during Johnson's lifetime. The first edition was published in 1775; the second closely followed, the first volume late in 1775 and the second early in 1756; the third edition was published in 1765; and the fourth in 1773. All the subsequent texts of the Preface contain variations from the first edition both in such "accidentals" as spelling and punctuation, and in "substantive" readings directly affecting the sense. It is the purpose of this study to record these


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variations; to indicate, on the basis of them, the relations among the several editions; to distinguish, so far as possible, between those variant readings which should be attributed to Johnson and those which should be attributed to the compositor or proof-corrector; and to suggest the editorial principles on which future editions of the Preface should be based.

I. The Second Folio Edition, 1755-56

The second edition departs from the first in 31 readings, of which 15 are in the accidentals of the text and 16 affect its substance. The accidental variants may be considered first, for they are not of great importance, and there is no clear sign that Johnson is responsible for any of them.

    Spelling: 6 changes: [2]

  • (2) pionier to pioneer pioneer is the spelling in the Dictionary, where Johnson gives pionier as the French form.
  • (2) recompense to recompence recompence is the spelling in the Dictionary, and cf. expence (20), licence (68), (90), chace (72).
  • (48) synonimous to synonymous synonymous is the spelling in the Dictionary; but cf. synonimes (43) in all editions.
  • (67) though to tho' both forms are given in the Dictionary.
  • (74) subtle to subtile although both forms are given in the Dictionary, subtle is noted as the spelling commonly used for the sense of cunning, which is not the meaning here. Elsewhere in the Preface subtle appears at (44), but subtile at (85) and subtilty at (69).
  • (81) unreguarded to unregarded the first edition spelling is incorrect.

    Punctuation: 7 changes:

  • (4) purity; to purity, the first edition punctuation is clearly correct.
  • (20) importance to importance, an indifferent change; precedents for either reading can be found elsewhere in the Preface, although in general Johnson prefers a heavier punctuation.
  • (29) dictionary, to dictionary the 2d edition reading is more "modern," and may be defended by analogy with a comparable phrase in (72); but the first edition's comma is the less obvious punctuation, and

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    Johnson often encloses with commas, even when this is not necessary to mark the syntax, phrases to which he wants to give special prominence; cf. the last two sentences of (19).
  • (55) CHEER to CHEER, this change corrects an error in the first edition.
  • (56) examples, to examples perhaps indifferent; but the comma makes the syntax clearer and is more consistent with Johnson's heavy punctuation. Cf. the last sentence of (63).
  • (89) both, to both; indifferent; precedents for both punctuations can be found in the Preface.
  • (94) Beni, to Beni; this change corrects an error in the first edition.

    Capitalization: I change:

  • (20) but to But this is probably not Johnson's change, for he often began the answer to a question with a lower-case letter. Cf. (91), where a similar normalization was introduced in the fourth edition; and cf. also the lower-case letter to begin the second of a series of two questions in (88).

    Typographical style: I change:

  • (40) to break to to break this change corrects an error in the first edition.

Four of these changes —those in (81), (55), (94), and (40)—are simple corrections of errors in the first edition. All the errors are obvious, and the corrections merely bring the readings into conformity with the style of the remainder of the text. All could have been easily made by a careful compositor or an alert press-corrector, and the general excellence of the work on this edition suggests that the compositors were careful and the proof-correctors alert, for although these four errors were corrected, no new errors were introduced. I do not think, therefore, that these four changes need be attributed to Johnson.

Most of the remaining 11 changes are normalizations or easier readings. None seems clearly to be by Johnson, and in view of the relatively small number of substantive changes he made in the text for this edition, it is perhaps doubtful that his care extended to details of spelling and punctuation. I should be inclined to attribute these 11 changes in accidentals, therefore, to the compositor.

There are 16 substantive changes in the second-edition text.

(11) The first edition reads:

Such defects are not errours in orthography, but spots of barbarity impressed so deep in the English language, that criticism can never wash them away; these, therefore,

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must be permitted to remain untouched: but many words have likewise been altered by accident, or depraved by ignorance, as the pronunciation of the vulgar has been weakly followed; . . . .
In the second edition the latter portion reads:
. . . but many words have been altered by accident, or depraved by ignorance, . . . .
The omission of likewise may be a compositor's error, for it is easier to omit a word than to insert one. But I think this is Johnson's change, made because he saw that likewise was not quite accurate: alterations of the language from accident and depravations from ignorance are errors, and hence are not produced in a manner like that which accounts for the spots of barbarity referred to first. likewise, furthermore, dulls the antithesis, and weakens Johnson's charge that preventable damage is done by accidental or ignorant alteration.

(15) The first edition reads:

I have left, in the examples, to every authour his own practice unmolested, that the reader may balance suffrages, and judge between us: . . . .
In the second edition the next word to the last is altered to betwixt. In view of the care with which the compositor followed his copy in setting this edition, I doubt that he would have made so unnecessary a change, although it is not beyond belief. On the other hand, I do not see why Johnson should have made it. But on balance it should probably be attributed to him.

(38) The first edition reads:

As composition is one of the chief characteristicks of a language, I have endeavoured to make some reparation for the universal negligence of my predecessors, by inserting great numbers of compounded words, as may be found under after, fore, new, night, fair, and many more.
The second edition text omits fair from this list. This is surely Johnson's change. In defining after, fore, new, and night in the Dictionary, he calls attention to the use of each in composition and gives numerous examples— 38 passages exemplifying compounds with new, some 30 compounds of night, 27 with after, and 73 with fore. But in defining fair he says nothing of its use as a compounding element, and he gives no compound words formed from it. We may speculate on the sequence of events underlying the inclusion of fair in the first edition. Johnson may have included it by mistake, although this is unlikely on the face of it, and the more so because the first four words in the list are in alphabetical order. It is most improbable that the compositor intruded a word. The likeliest explanation is that Johnson's manuscript contained a fifth example which the

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compositor misread as fair; in his revisal Johnson recognized fair as incorrect, without being able to recall the word he had originally written or troubling to add another. We can only guess at what the original reading may have been. Perhaps it was semi, which would fall correctly in the alphabetical series, which is treated in the Dictionary as a prolific source of compounds, and which could have been misread as fair in Johnson's hand.[3]

(38) The first edition reads:

These [compound words], numerous as they are, might be multiplied, but that use and curiosity are here satisfied, and the frame of our language and modes of our combination amply discovered.
In the second edition the last words read, with a sensible improvement of the rhythm, "modes of our combination are amply discovered."

(39) The first edition reads:

Of some forms of composition, such as that by which re is prefixed to note repetition, and un to signify contrariety or privation, all the examples cannot be accumulated, because the use of these particles, if not wholly arbitrary, is so little limited, that they are hourly affixed to new words as occasion requires, or is imagined to require them.
But affixed is wrong, for it means "to unite to the end, or à posteriori; to subjoin." Johnson therefore corrected the second edition text to united (having used prefixed earlier in the sentence, he did not want to repeat it).

(40) The first edition reads:

These [verbal phrases] I have noted with great care; and though I cannot flatter myself that the collection is complete, I believe I have so far assisted the students of our language, that this kind of phraseology will be no longer insuperable; . . . .
In the second edition Johnson changed I believe I have to I have perhaps, possibly with a view to continuing more consistently the modest tone of the preceding clause.

(41) The first edition reads:

Many words yet stand supported only by the name of Bailey, Ainsworth, Philips, or the contracted Dict. for Dictionaries subjoined: of these I am not always certain that they are read in any book but the works of lexicographers. Of such I have omitted many, because I had never read them; . . . .
The second edition reads: "of these I am not always certain that they are seen in any book but the works of lexicographers." I see no reason to attribute

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this change to the compositor. Johnson's alteration not only eliminates the rather awkward repetition of read, but distinguishes nicely between seeing a word in a dictionary and reading it in a book.

(43) First edition:

And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, requires the use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such terms cannot always be found; for as nothing can be proved but by supposing something intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit a definition.
In the second edition the final part of this passage reads:
so nothing can be defined but by supposing some words too plain to admit a definition.
I am not sure I can assay this change correctly; but I do not believe it is Johnson's. Johnson's point is not that definition forces us to suppose (what we might not otherwise know) that some words are too plain to be defined. This we already know ("such terms cannot always be found"). Instead, his point is that definition is impossible without the use of these words, which cannot themselves be defined. In the first edition the phrase the use of words stands directly below by supposing something, and I suspect that the second-edition compositor read the wrong line—the surrounding words are very similar—and carried by supposing some down into the next line as he set it.

(45) The first edition reads:

If of these [words of loose and general signification] the whole power is not accurately delivered, it must be remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every one that speaks it, these words are hourly shifting their relations, . . . .
The second edition's "caprice of every tongue that speaks it" is an obvious improvement by Johnson.

(78) The first edition reads:

That many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, must be frankly acknowledged; but for this defect I may boldly allege that it was unavoidable: I could not visit caverns to learn the miner's language, nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation, nor visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of artificers, to gain the names of wares, tools and operations, of which no mention is found in books; . . . .
On re-reading this passage Johnson was perhaps struck by the repetition in warehouses: wares, or perhaps by the imperfect balance which results

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from illustrating the contents of warehouses with one word and of shops with two. Whatever the reason, he made the phraseology at once more elegant and more particular by substituting for wares the words commodities, utensils: "the warehouses of merchants, and shops of artificers, to gain the names of commodities, utensils, tools and operations, of which no mention is found in books."

(85) The first edition reads:

. . . the stile of Amelot's translation of father Paul is observed by Le Courayer to be un peu passè; . . .
The error in accent may not have been Johnson's, but it was probably he who corrected the second-edition text to un peu passè.

(89) The first edition reads:

He that has long cultivated another language, will find its words and combinations croud upon his memory; and haste and negligence, refinement and affectation, will obtrude borrowed terms and exotick expressions.
Johnson, perhaps to avoid repeating and four times in quick succession, altered this in the second edition to read:
and haste or negligence, refinement or affectation, . . .

(92) The first edition reads:

In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology to the nations of the continent.
Perhaps this seemed too categorical, especially for the peroration. Johnson revised it to read:
that we may no longer yield the palm of philology without a contest to the nations of the continent.
As will be seen, Johnson again made this change when he revised the Preface for the 1773 edition.

(93) The first edition reads:

. . . some who distinguish desert . . . will consider . . . that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprize vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; . . .
In the second edition the words of the mind are omitted. I do not think Johnson made this change: it weakens the rhythm and obscures the meaning. The compositor accidentally dropped the phrase.


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(94) The first edition reads:

If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni . . . I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection. . . .
Johnson altered be yet to are yet in the second edition. It is true that Johnson notes in the Grammar of the English tongue that "the indicative and conjunctive moods are by modern writers frequently confounded," and that after if the conjunctive is used "among the purer writers." But he may have decided that the conjunctive did not suit well the mood of the verbs in the two succeeding if-clauses in this passage, and he may have chosen to sacrifice purity to a stronger suggestion that the lexicons of ancient tongues are inadequate.

Of these 16 changes introduced in the second edition, two—those in (43) and (93)—are probably compositor's errors. The rest are probably by Johnson.

II. The Third Folio Edition, 1765

This text of the Preface has no independent textual authority. It is a page-for-page reprint of the second edition, and follows that edition in all the readings in which it departs from the first edition. The third edition introduces no new substantive readings. It departs from the second edition text in only 12 places: five of these are sporadic normalizations of spelling, three are slight changes in punctuation, of which one is indifferent and two obscure Johnson's syntax, and four are clear compositor's errors.[4] The third edition may therefore be disregarded.

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


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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 hope of giving longevity to hat which its own nature forbids to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology to the nations of the continent.
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


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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:

Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pionier of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths of Learning and Genius, who press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress.
1773: . . . doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths through which Learning and Genius press forward to conquest and glory, . . . .

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

that diversity of spelling observable in the Saxon remains, and I suppose in the first books of every nation, which perplexes or destroys analogy, and produces anomalous formations, which, being once incorporated, can never be afterward dismissed or reformed.
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

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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:

. . . some words, such as dependant, dependent; dependance, dependence, vary their final syllable, as one or other language is present to the writer.
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:

. . . it can be no criminal degree of censoriousness to charge that etymologist with want of judgment, who can seriously derive dream from drama, because life is a drama, and a drama is a dream; and who declares with a tone of defiance, that no man can fail to derive moan from μόνοζ, monos, who considers that grief naturally loves to be alone.
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:

Words arbitrarily formed by a constant and settled analogy, like diminutive adjectives in ish, as greenish, bluish, adverbs in ly, as dully, openly, substantives in ness, as vileness, faultiness, were less diligently sought, and many sometimes have been omitted, when I had no authority that invited me to insert them; . . . .
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.


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(36) 1755:

The participles are likewise omitted, unless, by signifying rather qualities than action, they take the nature of adjectives; as a thinking man, a man of prudence; a pacing horse, a horse that can pace: these I have ventured to call participial adjectives.
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:

There is another kind of composition more frequent in our language than perhaps in any other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty. We modify the signification of many verbs by a particle subjoined; as to come off, to escape by a fetch; to fall on, to attack; . . . .
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:

. . . when Tully owns himself ignorant whether lessus, in the twelve tables, means a funeral song, or mourning garment; and Aristotle doubts whether οὔρευς, in the Iliad, signifies a mule, or muleteer, I may freely, without shame, leave some obscurities to happier industry, or future information.
For I may freely the 1773 text has I may surely. Johnson perhaps sought a more modest tone.

(69) 1755:

Thus have I laboured to settle the orthography, display the analogy, regulate the structures, and ascertain the signification of English words, to perform all the parts of a faithful lexicographer: but I have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations.
Johnson changed this in 1773 to read:
Thus have I laboured by settling the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the signification of English words, to perform all the parts of a faithful lexicographer: . . . .
This change eliminates an awkward shift in construction in the original

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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:

When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind.
In 1773 the passage reads instead:
. . . and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, with the obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and ransack; the treasures. . . .
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:

I then contracted my design, determining to confide in myself, and no longer to solicit auxiliaries, which produced more incumbrance than assistance: by this I obtained at least one advantage, that I set limits to my work, which would in time be finished, though not completed.
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

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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:

Many of the distinctions which to common readers appear useless and idle, will be found real and important by men versed in the school philosophy, without which no dictionary ever shall be accurately compiled, or skilfully examined.
In 1773 ever shall is transposed, by Johnson, I presume, to shall ever.

(84) 1755:

Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design, require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in it without opposition.
In 1773:
Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design, will require. . . .
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:

When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.
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:

But what makes a word obsolete, more than general agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or recalled again into

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the mouths of mankind, when it has once by disuse become unfamiliar, and by unfamiliarity unpleasing.
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

. . . that we may no longer yield the palm of philology to the nations of the continent to
. . . that we may no longer yield the palm of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the continent.

(94) 1755:

. . . it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow: and it may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed.
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.


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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


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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.

Notes

 
[1]

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.

[2]

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.

[3]

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.

[4]

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."

[5]

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

[6]

Life, II, 205; 24 February 1773.

[7]

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.

[8]

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.