he died in 1744, before anything further was done.  The subject seems then to have been pressed upon the attention of SAMUEL JOHNSON; but it was not till 1747 that the matter took definite shape, when a syndicate of five or six London booksellers contracted with Johnson to produce the desired standard dictionary in the space of three years for the sum of fifteen hundred guineas.  Alas for human calculations, and especially for those of dictionary makers!  The work occupied nearly thrice the specified time, and, ere it was finished, the stipulated sum had been considerably overdrawn.  At length, in 1755, appeared the two massive folios, each 17 inches long, 10 inches wide, and 3-1/2 inches thick, entitled ’A | Dictionary | of the | English Language | in which | the Words are deduced from their Originals, | and | illustrated in their different significations | by Examples from the Best Writers. | By Samuel Johnson.’  The limits of this lecture do not permit me to say one tithe of what might and ought to be said of this great work.  For the present purpose it must suffice to point out that the special new feature which it contributed to the evolution of the modern dictionary was the illustration of the use of each word by a selection of literary quotations, and the more delicate appreciation and discrimination of senses which this involved and rendered possible.  Only where he had no quotations did Johnson insert words from Bailey’s folio, or other source, with Dict. as the authority.  The literary quotations were entirely supplied by himself from his capacious memory, or from books specially perused and marked by him for extraction.  When he first began his work in the room in Gough Square, his whole time was devoted to thus reading and marking books, from which six clerkly assistants copied the marked quotations.  The fact that many of the quotations were inserted from memory without verification (a practice facilitated by Johnson’s plan of merely naming the author, without specifying the particular work quoted, or giving any reference whereby the passage could be turned up) is undoubtedly the reason why many of the quotations are not verbally exact.  Even so, however, they are generally adequate for the purpose for which they are adduced, that is, they usually contain the word for which they are quoted, and the context is more or less accurately rendered.  But in some cases it is otherwise:  Johnson’s memory played him false, and he quotes a passage for a word that it does not actually contain.  As an example, under Distilment he correctly quotes from Hamlet, ’And in the porches of mine ears did pour the leperous distilment.’  But when he reached Instilment, his memory became vague, and forgetting that he had already quoted the passage under Distilment, he quoted it again as ’the leperous instilment’—­a reading which does not exist in any text of Shakspere, and was a mere temporary hallucination of memory.  There are some other curious mistakes, which must,