commits errours, where there appears neither ambi guity to mislead, nor obfcurity to confound him; and in a fearch like this, many felicities of expreffion will be cafually overlooked, many convenient parrallels will be forgotten, and many particulars will admit improvement from a mind utterly unequal to the whole performance.

But many feeming faults are to be imputed rather to the nature of the undertaking, than the negli gence of the performer. Thus fome explanations are unavoidably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the female of the fiag; ftag, the male of the hind: fometimes easier words are changed into harder, as burial into fepulture, or interment, drier into deficcative, dryness into ficcity or aridity, fit into paroxyfm; for the eafieft word, whatever it be, can never be tranf lated into one more eafy. But eafinefs and difficulty are merely relative; and if the prefent prevalence of our language fhould invite foreigners to this Dictionary, many will be affifted by thofe words which now feem only to increafe or produce obfcurity. For this reafon I have endeavoured frequently to join a Teutonick and Roman interpretation, as to cheer, to gladden, or exhilarate, that every learner of English may be affifted by his own tongue.

The folution of all difficulties, and the fupply of all defects must be fought in the examples, fubjoined to the various fenfes of each word, and ranged according to the time of their authors.

When I first collected thefe authorities, I was defirous that every quotation fhould be ufeful to fome other end than the illuftration of a word; I therefore extracted from philofophers principles of

4

fcience;

fcience; from hiftorians remarkable facts; from chymifts complete proceffes; from divines ftriking exhortations; and from poets beautiful defcriptions. Such is defign, while it is yet at a distance from execution. When the time called upon me to range this accumulation of elegance and wifdom into an alphabetical feries, I foon difcovered that the bulk of my volumes would fright away the ftudent, and was forced to depart from my scheme of including all that was pleafing or useful in English literature, and reduce my tranfcripts very often to clusters of words, in which fcarcely any meaning is retained; thus to the weariness of copying, I was condemned to add the vexation of expunging. Some paffages I have yet fpared, which may relieve the labour of verbal fearches, and interfperfe with ver dure and flowers the dufty defarts of barren phi lology.

The examples, thus mutilated, are no longer to be confidered as conveying the fentiments or doctrine of their authors; the word for the fake of which they are inferted, with all its appendant claufes, has been carefully preferved; but it may fometimes happen, by hafty detruncation, that the general tendency of the fentence may be changed: the divine may defert his tenets, or the philofopher his fyftem.

Some of the examples have been taken from writers who were never mentioned as maflers of elegance, or models of ftyle; but words must be fought where they are used; and in what pages, eminent for purity, can terms of manufacture or agriculture be found? Many quotations ferve no E 2

other

other purpose than that of proving the bare exiftence of words, and are therefore selected with lefs fcrupuloufness than thofe which are to teach their structures and relations.

My purpose was to admit no teftimony of living authors, that I might not be mifled by partiality, and that none of my cotemporaries might have reafon to complain; nor have I depated from this refolution, but when fome performance of uncommon excellence excited my veneration, when my memory supplied me, from late books, with an example that was wanting, or when my heart, in the tenderness of friendship, folicited admiffion for a favourite name.

So far have I been from any care to grace my pages with modern decorations, that I have ftudioufly endeavoured to collect examples and authorities from the writers before the restoration, whose works I regard as the wells of English undefiled, as the pure fources of genuine diction. Our language, for almost a century, has, by the concurrence of many caufes, been gradually departing from its original Teutonick character, and deviating towards a Gallick ftructure and phrafeology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recal it, by making our ancient volumes the ground-work of style, admitting among the additions of later times, only fuch as may fupply real deficiencies, fuch as are readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate eafily with our native idioms.

But as every language has a time of rudeness antecedent to perfection, as well as of falfe refinement and declenfion, I have been cautious left my zeal for antiquity might drive me into times too remote,

and

and crowd my book with words now no longer understood. I have fixed Sidney's work for the boundary, beyond which I make few excurfions. From the authors which rofe in the time of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. If the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrafes of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenfer and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be loft to mankind, for want of English words, in which they might be expreffed.

It is not fufficient that a word is found, unless it be fo combined as that its meaning is apparently de-. termined by the tract and tenour of the fentence; fuch paffages I have therefore chofen, and when it happened that any author gave a definition of a term, or fuch an explanation as is equivalent to a definition, I have placed his authority as a fupplement to my own, without regard to the chronological order, that is otherwife obferved.

Some words, indeed, ftand unfupported by any authority, but they are commonly derivative nouns or adverbs, formed from their primitives by regular and conftant analogy, or names of things seldom occurring in books, or words of which I have reason to doubt the existence.

There is more danger of cenfure from the multiplicity than paucity of examples; authorities will fometimes feem to have been accumulated without neceffity or ufe, and perhaps fome will be found, which might, without lofs, have been omitted.

But a work of this kind is not haftily to be charged with fuperfluities; thofe quotations, which to carelefs or unfkilful perufers appear only to repeat the fame fenfe, will often exhibit, to a more accurate examiner, diverfities of fignification, or, at least, afford different fhades of the fame meaning: one will fhew the word applied to perfons, another to things; one will exprefs an ill, another a good, and a third a neutral fenfe; one will prove the expreffion genuine from an ancient author; another will fhew it elegant from a modern: a doubtful authority is corroborated by another of more credit; an ambiguous fentence is afcertained by a paffage clear and determinate: the word, how often foever repeated, appears with new affociates and in different combinations, and every quotation contributes fomething to the ftability or enlargement of the language.

When words are ufed equivocally, I receive them in either fenfe; when they are metaphorical, I adopt them in their primitive acceptation.

I have fometimes, though rarely, yielded to the temptation of exhibiting a genealogy of fentiments, by fhewing how one author copied the thoughts and diction of another: fuch quotations are indeed little more than repetitions, which might juftly be cenfured, did they not gratify the mind, by affording a kind of intellectual hiftory.

The various fyntactical structures occurring in the examples have been carefully noted; the licence or negligence with which many words have been hitherto used, has made our ftyle capricious and indeterminate; when the different combinations of the fame word are exhibited together, the preference is readily