In opposition to the purists who would have clasped the
language forever within the covers of Johnson, he insisted on the
necessity of coining new words or adapting old ones to express new
things and new relations. It is many years since we read his "Remarks"
(if that was the title) on Pickering's "Vocabulary," and in answer to
the rather supercilious criticisms on himself in the "Anthology"; but
the impression left on our mind by that pamphlet is one of great
respect for the good sense, acuteness, and courage of its author. And
of his Dictionary it may safely be said, that, with all its mistakes,
no work of the kind had then appeared so learned and so comprehensive.
It may be doubted if any living language possessed at that time a
dictionary, or one, at least, the work of a single man, in all respects
its equal.
But etymologies are not the most important part of a good working
dictionary, the intention of which is not to inform readers and writers
what a word may have meant before the Dispersion, but what it means
now. The pedigree of an adjective or substantive is of little
consequence to ninety-nine men in a hundred, and the writers who have
wielded our mother-tongue with the greatest mastery have been men who
knew what words had most meaning to their neighbors and acquaintances,
and did not stay their pens to ask what ideas the radicals of those
words may possibly have conveyed to the mind of a bricklayer going up
from Padanaram to seek work on the Tower of Babel.
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