More on the Same Subject

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 8

More on the Same Subject

10 one will welcome the dictionary discussed on this page more than Julius Hogben, though as a private collector of dictionaries, he will probably regret being unabie to put it on his shglves. As a collector Mr. Hogben considers, himself a meré amateur. "It just happened," he says, "that I came .by one or two and then the opportunity to acquire others was more than I could resist. I hayen’t very many, ‘probably between 20 and 30." But those 20 or 30 give their owner endless enjoyment, some of which he shares with listeners in his talks I Colleet Dictionaries now being heard from 1YA and later to be broadcast from other YA stations. Dictionaries, that not only define but also comment-and even air the prejudices of their compilers-are no new thing, Mr. Hogben points out, for the celebrated dictionary of Dr. Samuel Johnson did all that. Editors have bowdlerised out of that dictionary most of Johnson’s brightness, so that to get the greatest enjoyment from-him you must seek out one of the earlier editions. For example, Johnson originally

defined "excise" as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not’ by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." Later it became merely a tax levied on commodities. Boswell; Mr. Hogben recalls, said that the Commissioners of Excise were so annoyed by Johnson’s original definition that they consulted the Attorney-General, who advised them that the definition was ac-tionable-but that it would be more prudent not to prosecute! Mr. Hogben, who has selected a mere handful from his collection for more particular attention in his ‘talks, has already been heard from 1YA iltustrating his contention that "dictionaries: are never dull’’-though he points out the unfortunate fact that "the least interesting of them and those most likely to create an allergy to all dictionaries are those emasculated volumes (many of them called Schoo] Dictionaries) which give very meagre information and omit all the excitement." This Sunday (May 15) at 9.30 p.m. he gets down to cases In a more detailed way with a talk on a dictionary of hard words-actually the

oldest dictionary he owns, published in 1658..On May 22, at the same time, he tells the story of the dictionary that was | publicly burnt. Remarkable as it may seem, it was a legal dictionary.