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<h2>Johnson's Dictionary<o:p></o:p></h2>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><strong><span
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Published: April 17, 2005</p>
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<p>Two hundred fifty years ago, on April 15, 1755, Samuel Johnson
published the
first edition of his Dictionary of the English Language, compiled and
written
almost wholly by himself. It appeared in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:City>
in two folio volumes. Like most dictionaries, there is a rigorous
serenity in
the look of its pages. The language has been laid out in alphabetical
order.
The etymologies and definitions bristle with italics and abbreviations.
The
quotations that exemplify the meanings of the words present a
bottomless fund
of good sense and literary beauty.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>But I wonder whether anyone has ever had a more dynamic or volatile
sense of
the language than Johnson did. We tend to remember him as an older man,
grown
heavy, his face weighed down as much by indolence as industry. But in
April
1755 he was not yet 46. With the publication of his dictionary, he
returned
from his researches into the English language the way an explorer
returns from
the North Pole, with a sense of having seen a terrain that others can
see only
through his account of what he found there. Instead of a wilderness of
ice, he
faced what he called, in his preface to the dictionary, "the boundless
chaos of a living speech." Instead of voyages into Arctic waters, he
talks
of "fortuitous and unguided excursions into books." <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>It's tempting to think of a lexicographer in terms of the dictionary
he
produces, and Johnson's is certainly one of the great philological
accomplishments of any literary era. But it's just as interesting to
think of
what the dictionary does to the man. Johnson says, quite simply, "I
applied myself to the perusal of our writers." But reading "our
writers" to find the materials for a dictionary is unlike any other
kind
of reading I can imagine. It would atomize every text, forsake the
general
sense of a passage for the particular meaning of individual words. It
would be
like hiking through quicksand, around the world. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Johnson lived in turmoil, and the sense of vigor he so often
projected was,
if nothing else, a way of keeping order in a world that threatened to
disintegrate into disorder every day. And what was the disorder of <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:City> to the
chaos of
the language? "Sounds," he wrote, "are too volatile and subtile
for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are
equally
the undertakings of pride." Johnson published his dictionary not as the
conqueror of the language but as the person who knew best how
unconquerable it
really is.<o:p></o:p></p>
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