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III
Grammar: Alterations in Fourth Edition
The fourth edition of the Grammar, set, like the Preface, from the first edition, contains seventy-seven substantive, and one hundred and forty-two accidental, variants from the first, second, and third editions. Of the former group, Sherbo cites (pp. 19, 20, 29-33) thirty-four, which are starred below. Nagashima counts (p. 146) a total of twenty-seven, excluding the addition of the names of the ten poets whose lines are quoted in the section on Prosody (sigs. N2r-O1r), and he reproduces (pp. 147-148) two variants—a revision of a phrase (see below) and one addition to the text (see below). Neither he nor Sherbo mentions the accidental differences in the fourth edition.
The substantive variants can be divided into fifty additions and twenty-seven revisions (including omissions). The additions range from whole paragraphs and sentences through parts of sentences to single words. Since Johnson's hand is clearly discernible in most of them and consonant with the small remainder, we have admitted all of these additions into our text. Arranged sequentially from the beginning to the end of the Grammar, they are:
- (1) "Saxon" and below "Saxon" two columns of the capital and small letters of the "Saxon" alphabet (sig. a1r); a similar list, it should be pointed out, appears at the end of the Grammar in editions one through eight (1756-86) of the abridged Dictionary
- (2) "and consequently able to pronounce the letters, of which I teach the pronunciation;" in the sentence beginning "I consider" (ibid.)
- (3) "as in věx, pěrplexity" in the sentence beginning "It is always short" (sig. a1v)
- (4) "in his Remains" in the sentence beginning "Camden" (ibid.)
- (5) "This faintness of sound is found when e separates a mute from a liquid, as in rotten; or follows a mute and liquid, as in cattle.", forming a new paragraph after the sentence ending in "lucre" (ibid.)
- (6) "Many is pronounced as if it were written manny.", forming a new paragraph after the sentence ending in "frog" (ibid.)
- (7) "having no determinate sound," after the letter "C," which also begins the sentence (ibid.)
- (8) "to which may be added Egypt and" after "gingle" and before "gypsy" in the sentence beginning "G before" (sig. a2r)
- (9) "It sometimes begins middle or final syllables in words compounded, as blockhead; or derived from the Latin, as comprehended," forming a new paragraph after the sentence beginning "It seldom" (ibid.); see also the revision above
- (10) "because sc is sounded like s, as in scene" after "sceptick" in the sentence beginning "K has" (ibid.)
- (11) "in modern pronunciation" following "sound" in the sentence beginning "It is used" (ibid.)
- (12) "stripe" added between "stramen" and "sventura" in the sentence beginning "Σβέννυμι" (ibid.)
- (13) "words ending in ty," added after "from" and before "as" in the sentence beginning "Ti before" (ibid.)
- (14) "and in" after "compounds;" and before "that" in the sentence beginning "The sound" (ibid.)
- *(15) "The chief argument by which w and y appear to be always vowels is, that the sounds which they are supposed to have as consonants, cannot be uttered after a vowel, like that of all other consonants; thus we say, tu, ut; do, odd; but in wed, dew, the two sounds of w have no resemblance of each other," forming a new paragraph after the sentence ending in "rosy youth" (ibid.)
- *(16) "The English language has properly no dialects; the stile of writers has no professed diversity in the use of words, or of their flexions, and terminations, nor differs but by different degrees of skill or care. The oral diction is uniform in no spacious country, but has less variation in England than in most other nations of equal extent. The language of the northern counties retains many words now out of use, but which are commonly of the genuine Teutonick race, and is uttered with a pronunciation which now seems harsh and rough, but was probably used by our ancestors. The northern speech is therefore not barbarous but obsolete. The speech in the western provinces seems to differ from the general diction rather by a depraved pronunciation, than by any real difference which letters would express," forming a new paragraph after the sentence ending in "have followed them" (sig. a2v)
- *(17) "An or a can only be joined with a singular, the correspondent plural is the noun without an article, as I want a pen, I want pens: or with the pronominal adjective some, as I want some pens," forming a new paragraph after "Shakespeare" (sig. b1r)
- *(18) "Dr. Lowth, on the other part, supposes the possessive pronouns mine and thine to be genitive cases," added after the sentence ending in "Latin genitive" (ibid.)
- (19) "for the most part" after "have" and before "no genitives" in the sentence beginning "Plurals ending" (ibid.)
- *(20) "They would commonly produce a troublesome ambiguity, as the Lord's house may be the house of Lords, or the house of a Lord. Besides that the mark of elision is improper, for in the Lords' house nothing is cut off. Some English substantives, like those of many other languages, change their termination as they express different sexes, as prince, princess; actor, actress; lion, lioness; hero, heroines. To these mentioned by Dr. Lowth may be added arbitress, poetess, chauntress, duchess, tigress, governess, tutress, peeress, authoress, traytress, and perhaps others. Of these variable terminations we have only a sufficient number to make us feel our want, for when we say of a woman that she is a philosopher, an astronomer, a builder, a weaver, a dancer, we perceive an impropriety in the termination which we cannot avoid; but we can say that she is an architect, a botanist, a student, because these terminations have not annexed to them the notion of sex. In words which the necessities of life are often requiring, the sex is distinguished not by different terminations but by different names, as a bull, a cow; a horse, a mare; equus, equa; a cock, a hen; and sometimes by pronouns prefixed, as a he-goat, a she-goat," appearing after the sentence ending in "against them" (ibid.); this addition (partly) quoted by Nagashima
- (21) "some" added to the sentence ending in "the same" (sig. b1v)
- *(22) "as, thy house is larger than mine, but my garden is more spacious than thine" added to the sentence ending in "substantive preceding" (ibid.)
- *(23) "they, when they is the plural of it," after "likewise of" and before "and are" in the sentence beginning "Their and" (ibid.)
- *(24) "At least it was common to say, the man which, though I remember no example of, the thing who" after the sentence ending in "anciently confounded" (sig. b1v)
- (25) "or hath" after "he has" and before "had" in the line beginning "Sing." and under the "Compound Preterite" form of the verb to have (sig. b2r)
- *(26) "This, by custom at least, appears more easy than the other form of expressing the same sense by a negative adverb after the verb, I like her, but love her not" after the sentence beginning "It is frequently" (sig. b2v)
- *(27) "of former times" after "purer writers" and before "after if" in the sentence beginning "It is used" (ibid.)
- (28) "till or until" after "before" and before "whether" in the same sentence identified above (ibid.)
- *(29) "Wrote however may be used in poetry; at least if we allow any authority to poets, who, in the exultation of genius, think themselves perhaps intitled to trample on grammarians," after the sentence ending in "The book is wrote" (ibid.)
- (30) "and" after "worshipful," and before "to worship" in the sentence beginning "Thus worship" (sig. c1v)
- *(31) "made by beating different bodies into one mass" after "for food," in the sentence beginning "There are in English" (ibid.)
- (32) "θυγαΤήρ" after "πορθμόζ" and before "μεαλοζ" in the sentence beginning "It is certain" (sigs. c1v-c2r)
- (33) "We should therefore say dispútable, indispútable, rather than dísputable, indísputable; and advertísement rather than advértisement" after the sentence beginning "16." and ending in "commúnicableness" (sig. c2v)
- *(34) "The variations necessary to pleasure belong to the art of poetry, not the rules of grammar" after the sentence beginning "In all" and ending in "observed" (sig. d1r)
- *(35) "Walton's Angler." below the line of poetry "Are but toys" (ibid.)
- *(36) "Old Ballad." below the line of poetry "Lovers felt annoy" (ibid.)
- *(37) "Waller." below the line of poetry ending in "your haughty birth" (ibid.)
- *(38) "The measures of twelve and fourteen syllables, were often mingled by our old poets, sometimes in alternate lines, and sometimes in alternate couplets" after the line of poetry ending in "distract" (ibid.)
- *(39) "Lewis to Pope." below the line of poetry ending in "see" (ibid.)
- *(40) "Beneath this tomb an infant lies To earth whose body lent,
Hereafter shall more glorious rise,
But not more innocent.
When the Archangel's trump shall blow,
And souls to bodies join,
What crowds shall wish their lives below
Had been as short as thine.
Wesley." below "Lewis to Pope" (ibid.)
- *(41) "Dr. Pope." below the line of poetry ending in "awáy" (ibid.)
- *(42) "Dr. Pope." below the line of poetry ending in "proúd" (ibid.)
- *(43) "When présent, we lóve, and when ábsent agrée" below "Dr. Pope." in the addition listed above (ibid.)
- *(44) "Dryden." below the line of poetry ending in "mé" (ibid.)
- *(45) "'Tis the divinity that stirs within us," below the sentence ending in "measure" (ibid.)
- *(46) "Addison." below the line of poetry ending in "man" (ibid.)
- *(47) "Prior." below the line of poetry ending in "abounded" (ibid.)
- *(48) "Glover." below the line of poetry ending in "alone" (ibid.)
- *(49) "Gay." below the line of poetry ending in "reclin'd" (ibid.)
- *(50) "Ballad." below the line of poetry ending in "right" (ibid.).
Like the additions, the twenty-seven revisions (including omissions) strike us, with one exception, as obviously authorial or else consistent with Johnson's mode of composition. Therefore we have admitted all of them save one into our text. Listed in the same order as the additions, they are:
- (1) "disquisition" substituted for "view" in the sentence beginning "I consider the English" (sig. a1r)
- (2) "metre" omitted from the sentence ending originally in "participle, metre, lucre" (sig. a1v)
- (3) "consonant" omitted from the phrase reading originally "w consonant, as" in the sentence beginning "It coalesces with" (ibid.)
- (4) "geld" substituted for "gold" in the phrase reading originally "gear, gold, geese" in the sentence beginning "G before e is soft" (sig. a2r)
- *(5) "perhaps never" omitted from the sentence beginning originally "[H] seldom, perhaps never, begins" (ibid.); see Johnson's revisions above
- (6) "snipe" substituted for "strife" between "smell" and "space" in the sentence beginning "Σβένννμζ, scatter" (ibid.)
- (7) "and" substituted for "the" in the phrase reading originally "The learned, the sagacious Wallis," which also begins the sentence (sig. b1r); this change noted by Nagashima
- *(8) "Do and did are thus used only for the present and simple preterite" substituted for the original sentence "Do is thus used only in the simple tenses" (sig. b2v)
- (9) "wend, the participle is gone" substituted for the original phrase "wend, and the participle gone" in the sentence beginning "Yet from flee" (sig. c1r)
- (10) "indecent" substituted for "indecency" in the phrase reading originally "indecency, inelegant, improper" in the sentence beginning "In borrowing adjectives" (ibid.)
- (11) "will not suffer h to be twice repeated" substituted for "prevails, lest h should be twice repeated" in the sentence beginning "These should rather" (sig. c1v)
- (12) "batter" substituted for "butter" in the phrase reading originally "to batter, butter" in the sentence beginning "There are in English" (ibid.); see the related addition above
- (13) "imply" substituted for "implies" in the sentence reading originally "Sn usually implies" (ibid.)
- (14) "denote" substituted for "denotes" in the phrase reading originally "sn denotes nasus" in the sentence beginning "But as if from" (ibid.)
- (15) "imply" substituted for "implies" in the sentence beginning originally "Bl implies" (ibid.)
- (16) "imply" substituted for "implies" in the sentence beginning originally "St in like manner implies" (ibid.)
- (17) "denote" substituted for "denotes" in the phrase reading originally "st denotes" in the sentence beginning "In all these" (ibid.)
- (18) "imply" substituted for "implies" in the sentence beginning originally "Thr implies" (ibid.)
- (19) "imply" substituted for "implies" in the sentence beginning originally "Sp implies" (ibid.)
- (20) "denote" substituted for "denotes" in the sentence beginning originally "Sl denotes" (ibid.)
- (21) "indicate" substituted for "indicates" in the sentence beginning originally "And so likewise . . . indicates" (ibid.)
- *(22) "path, pfad," omitted from the phrase reading originally "as path, pfad, ax" in the sentence beginning "It is certain" (sigs. c1v-c2r)
- (23) "heal" omitted from the phrase reading originally "whole, heal, from" in the same sentence identified above (ibid.)
- (24) "πα[Τζο]" omitted from the phrase reading originally "from πα[Τ]οζ, αξίνη" in the same sentence identified above (ibid.)
- (25) "εἰλέω" omitted from the same sentence identified above and ending originally in "ὅλοζ, εἰλέω" (ibid.)
- (26) "neglected" substituted for "omitted" in the sentence beginning "Wallis therefore has" (sig. c2v)
- (27) The single revision we have not adopted
is the erroneous "in" rather than
129"into" (occurring in the first, second, and third editions) in the phrase "sc in sh" in the sentence beginning "The contractions may" (sig. c2r).
Of the one hundred and forty-two accidental variants in the fourth edition of the Grammar, one hundred and twenty-nine concern punctuation, four spelling, three italics, two accent marks, two word order, one capitalization, and one a symbol for the letter r. We have adopted one hundred and twenty-two changes in punctuation, although we recognize that some of them may have been made by a compositor or a proof corrector rather than Johnson. Four of the remainder are patent mistakes (the first, second, and third editions all contain the correct marks); two more are less suitable to their contexts than are their counterparts; and the last one, like the rejected variants in spelling noted below, diverges from that in the edition of Michael Drayton's poems Johnson used in compiling the Dictionary. We have accepted one variant (a correction) in spelling; the rest, like the rejected punctuation mark noted above, depart from the text of Drayton's poems Johnson used in preparing the Dictionary. Finally, we have adopted all three variants in italics (one probably authorial, the other two corrections), one accent mark (a correction, the second being an error), the two in word order (one almost certainly authorial, the other possibly so), the one in capitalization (probably authorial), and the character for the letter r (almost certainly authorial).
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