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Notes
The texts of the first and fourth editions of the Dictionary have been entered into an electronic database by Rom-Data Corporation Ltd. in association with the University of Birmingham in preparation for publication of the text as a CD-ROM. This is the first stage in The Johnson Dictionary Project which will eventually see the publication of a critical edition of Johnson's Dictionary. Access to this database makes some searches easier and more reliable (although see notes 10 and 22 for qualifications of this), but for the most part my searches have only confirmed what other scholars have found. Gwin and Ruth Kolb called their samplings 'narrow' and 'unscientific', allowing them only 'tentative generalizations', but the pattern of deletions they noticed is repeated with great regularity ('The Selection and Use of the Illustrative Quotations in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary', in New Aspects of Lexicography: Literary Criticism, Intellectual History, and Social Change, ed. Howard D. Weinbrot [1972], 61-72). Allen Reddick's researches have revealed the process by which these deletions occurred in his examination of the manuscript materials and analysis of Johnson's revisions to the quoted passages (The Making of Johnson's Dictionary 1746-1773 [1990]).
'In citing authorities, on which the credit of every part of this work must depend, it will be proper to observe some obvious rules, such as of preferring writers of the first reputation to those of an inferior rank, of noting the quotations with accuracy, and of selecting, when it can be conveniently done, such sentences, as, besides their immediate use, may give pleasure or instruction by conveying some elegance of language, or some precept of prudence, or piety' (The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language [1747], 30-31); 'When I first collected these authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore extracted from philosophers principles of science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions' (Preface, par. 57).
'When I published my Dictionary, I might have quoted Hobbes as an authority in language . . . but I scorned, sir, to quote him at all; because I did not like his principles' (Conversation with Thomas Tyers, The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson, ed. O M Brack, Jr., and Robert E. Kelley [1974], 82). Dr. William Adams wrote in a letter to Boswell that Johnson 'had made it a rule not to admit Dr. Clarke's name in his Dictionary' because of Clarke's anti-Trinitarian views, but he adds 'This, however, wore off' (Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, 6 vols. [1934-64], IV, 416, n. 2). The name 'Clarke' appears 41 times in the Dictionary, but most of these are probably from John Clarke's A New Grammar of the Latine Tongue (1733) or An Introduction to the Making of Latin (1740). However, under the word 'justification', the second definition, 'Deliverance by pardon from sins past', has the name Clarke against it, with no quotation, and this may well be taken from Samuel Clarke. Hester Thrale notes Johnson's expression of a general principle that 'he never would give Shaftesbury Chubb or any wicked Writer's Authority for a Word, lest it should send People to look in a Book that might injure them forever' (Thraliana, ed. Katherine Balderston [1951], 34).
There are many examples of Johnson using a secondary source in the Dictionary. W. R. Keast has found perhaps the most dramatic in showing that Johnson's quotations from Clarissa are in fact from A Collection . . . of Moral and Instructive Sentiments selected from the novel by Solomon Lowe and included as an appendix to Vol. VII of the fourth edition of Clarissa, 1751 (Studies in Philology, 54 [July 1957], 429-439). Arthur Sherbo pointed out that a quotation which is cited in the Dictionary simply as 'Old Comedy' is, in fact, taken from a note by George Steevens in his revised edition of Johnson's Shakespeare ('1773: The Year of Revision', Eighteenth-Century Studies, 7 [1973], 18-39); I am grateful to Dr. G. W. Nicholls for the additional information that this quotation is from John Day's Law-Trickes, or, Who Would have Thought It and is quoted in the Johnson-Steevens edition of Shakespeare (1773), II, 321, n. 8. There are many other examples of the same phenomenon, and I think it highly likely that where a text is quoted only once, the source will be a footnote to a text Johnson was already marking up, rather than the original text itself.
I have counted 26 instances in the first edition and 28 instances in the fourth edition of the citation appearing as just 'Arbuthnot'. In two cases, under 'Miscarry' and 'Self', the citation appears as 'Pope and Arbuthnot', and in one case, under 'Monstrosity', the citation appears as 'Pope and Arbuthnot' in the first edition but as 'Arbuthnot and Pope' in the fourth.
Arbuthnot is quoted 1955 times in the first edition and 1986 times in the fourth edition. These figures may not be strictly accurate, and are likely to be conservative, since I have only counted citations in which his name appears; citations in which the title only is given (e.g. 'Mart. Scrib.') are not included. The other six works quoted are Tables of the Ancient Coins, Weights and Measures . . . (1727); The History of John Bull (1712/1727); An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments (1731); An Essay Concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies (1733); Practical Rules of Diet (1732) and The Art of Political Lying (1712). The History of John Bull appeared in the second volume of Benjamin Motte's Miscellanies, a text which Johnson used for many of his quotations from Pope. See below, n. 29.
He seems to have welcomed attack for his political pamphlets and was disappointed by the reaction to Texation no Tyranny: 'I think I have not been attacked enough for it. Attack is the re-action; I never think I have hit hard, unless it rebounds', and his general view was that 'the worst thing you can do to an authour is to be silent as to his works' (Boswell's Life of Johnson, II, 335; III, 375).
Rambler 83, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. IV, The Rambler, ed. W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss (1969), 70-76.
Don Quixote was one of only three books (Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress being the other two) which Johnson thought 'wished longer by its readers' (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, 2 vols. [1897], I, 332). Hudibras is mentioned in the Dictionary citations 739 times in the first edition.
The Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus, ed. Charles Kerby-Miller (1950), 69-70. All quotations from the Memoirs are taken from this edition.
Letter to Susannah Thrale, 25 March 1784 (The Letters of Samuel Johnson, The Hyde Edition, ed. Bruce Redford, 5 vols. [1992-94], IV, 301-302).
Gulliver's Travels is cited 99 times in the first edition and 44 times in the fourth; The Dunciad is cited 162 times in the first edition and 90 times in the fourth. Again, though, I have only counted citations in which the title itself appears. I have not noticed quotations from either of these texts in which the title is not given, but there may be some.
In the first edition the text is quoted under abductor, abortion, administer, aduncity, apple woman, arid, as, bachelor, bestiality, bigamy, billet, birdcage. bite, bobcherry, browbeat, burst, catamountain, chicanery, chirographist, christening, chromatick, clasp, cock, cockmatch, compile, confidant, constrictor, contain, contentation, coquette, court-day, crackbrained, cradle, cringe, cudgel, dead, decompound, disinclination, duck, duenna, effossion, embolus, enervate, enrapt, enthymeme, extensor, fatner, fence, file, flexor, fluid, football, gavot, gymnastick, handydandy, hebetate, heedlessly, hermaphrodite, hotcockles, hydraulick, hysterick, incapacitate, incontinently, incrust, indignant, individuality, inhale, intort, intrust, jackal, judgment, lame, lighthouse, longitude, lovetoy, lyre, make, manacle, mantiger, marble, microscopical, minor, miscarry, monstrosity, moor, murrey, musick, new, nonentity, nozle, numskull, ogle, ostrick, parish, pathognomonick, percussion, physiognomist, piazza, pineal, porcupine, potbelly, pout, prizefighter, punster, puppetshow, push, puss, quill, quoit, retreat, river-god, robustness, roe, salacious, saraband, satin, seal, seat, self, sesquipedalian, show, sigh, skylight, spirit, spleened, squall, stammer, state, straddle, suction, swift, tennis, tour, trade-wind, troglodyte, tune, uncoif, undismayed, ungently, universal, vectitation, vice, whirligig, wilderness, womanly, yonder. In the fourth edition the quotations under billet, new, and sigh are omitted. Very few of the quotations are altered or even condensed further in the fourth edition, though this is a common practice with other texts.
There are others which are unusual but not technical or scientific: bobcherry, catamountain, gavot, handydandy, hotcockles, mantiger, murrey, porcupine, saraband.
The twelve words are abductor, aduncity, chicanery, chirographist, chromatick, constrictor, effossion, embolus, flexor, pineal, troglodyte and vectitation.
He quotes from Pope approximately 4000 times in the first edition and 4150 times in the fourth edition. This compares with approximately 17500/17700 for Shakespeare; 11400/11500 for Dryden; 6200/7000 for Milton; 4350/4450 for Addison and 3200/3300 for Swift. These figures are not absolutely reliable for the reasons given (see notes 10 and 22).
But see Arthur M. Eastman, 'The Texts from which Johnson Printed his Shakespeare', JEGP, 49 (1950), 182-191, for evidence that Johnson occasionally used Theobald's 1757 edition as base text for his edition of Shakespeare, and Anne McDermott, 'The Defining Language: Johnson's Dictionary and Shakespeare's Macbeth', RES, n.s. 44 (November 1993), 521-538, for evidence that Johnson occasionally departed from Warburton's text in his Dictionary quotations.
Ruml suggests that Johnson probably used the fourth edition of Lintot's Miscellany (1722); Motte's Miscellanies (possibly the 1733 edition); the 1736-43 edition of Works, Vol. I; the 1736 Works, Vol. III; the 1738 Works, Vol. II, Part II; the first octavo issue of Works, Vol. III, Part II; the 1740 or 1743 Works, Vol. II, Parts I and II; and the 1743 Pope-Warburton edition as the major sources of his quotations.
King Lear: The Folio Text, III. iv. 100-102, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (1988).
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