JOHNSON'S ENGLISH

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1002, 17 December 1910, Page 9

JOHNSON'S ENGLISH

; Some idea of tho magnitude-of the .work thrust upon a man'who undertakes to -edit a dictionary was given to aji audience lately by 'Sir James Hurray; the editor of the . Oxford Dictionary, who, after stating that' he had had to write to . the .Director: of ICew Gardens about an exotio plant, to a Roman Catholic priest on A point of divinity, to a Newcastle boat-builder regarding a keel, to a sporting newspaper, to. someone about a bloater, and to many other people on a hundred'and ono* subjects, aptly remarked that a lexicographer, who desired io be accurate had to be a universal inquirer. In 1877, ho said, he had .the.. ..offer from an English aiid .American firm of publishers to edit an English dictionary and forthwith thero , began to pour' in upon him- different;' materials from all quarters. .. A multitude of accumulated quotations, numbering millions, and weighing tons, was sent to him. ITo was .confronted with the. problem where ho was to place these tons of matter. Eventually ho had an iron room .erected in his garden. In it- were pigeon-holes, cach of which, heId.GOOD quotations, unci visitors were astonished to learn, that the • room 'contained in. all. 5,000,000 quotations. Whether posterity would want a dictionary in 100 volumes ho did not know, but-, if it did, the, materials were ready. It would bo-casier to make a dictionary .in 100 volumes than one in ten. If a man started reading one quotation a minute during ah eight-hour-day, lie would take 30 years to finish the 5,000,000.

It was, cliaractcrislic of tho time when Dr. Johnson produced his "dictionary. that .-they thought , the English languago had attained perfection, /'but," said Sir James,- "compare any article in any 'monthly' with Dr. Johnson's dictionary, and strike out every word and sense that the- latter does not contain, and the. page would be almost-as black as if it had gone through tho hands of the Russian censor." '