general principles upon which he intends to frame his work, in order to invite timely suggestions and repress unreasonable expectations.  At this time, humble as his aspirations might be, he took a view of the possibilities open to him which had to be lowered before the publication of the dictionary.  He shared the illusion that a language might be “fixed” by making a catalogue of its words.  In the preface which appeared with the completed work, he explains very sensibly the vanity of any such expectation.  Whilst all human affairs are changing, it is, as he says, absurd to imagine that the language which repeats all human thoughts and feelings can remain unaltered.

A dictionary, as Johnson conceived it, was in fact work for a “harmless drudge,” the definition of a lexicographer given in the book itself.  Etymology in a scientific sense was as yet non-existent, and Johnson was not in this respect ahead of his contemporaries.  To collect all the words in the language, to define their meanings as accurately as might be, to give the obvious or whimsical guesses at Etymology suggested by previous writers, and to append a good collection of illustrative passages was the sum of his ambition.  Any systematic training of the historical processes by which a particular language had been developed was unknown, and of course the result could not be anticipated.  The work, indeed, required a keen logical faculty of definition, and wide reading of the English literature of the two preceding centuries; but it could of course give no play either for the higher literary faculties on points of scientific investigation.  A dictionary in Johnson’s sense was the highest kind of work to which a literary journeyman could be set, but it was still work for a journeyman, not for an artist.  He was not adding to literature, but providing a useful implement for future men of letters.

Johnson had thus got on hand the biggest job that could be well undertaken by a good workman in his humble craft.  He was to receive fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds for the whole, and he expected to finish it in three years.  The money, it is to be observed, was to satisfy not only Johnson but several copyists employed in the mechanical part of the work.  It was advanced by instalments, and came to an end before the conclusion of the book.  Indeed, it appeared when accounts were settled, that he had received a hundred pounds more than was due.  He could, however, pay his way for the time, and would gain a reputation enough to ensure work in future.  The period of extreme poverty had probably ended when Johnson got permanent employment on the Gentleman’s Magazine.  He was not elevated above the need of drudgery and economy, but he might at least be free from the dread of neglect.  He could command his market—­such as it was.  The necessity of steady labour was probably unfelt in repelling his fits of melancholy.  His name was beginning to be known, and men of reputation were seeking his