Chapter V: The Dictionary

This making of the first English dictionary was an incredible feat. There is a story told by Boswell, which shows that the stout hearted Johnson was well aware of the fact that he had undertaken a giant’s task. Dr. Adams entered the room one day and found Johnson hard at work. Said Adams: “This is a great work, sir. How are you to get all the etymologies?”

“Why, sir,” answered Johnson, “there is a shelf with Junius and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welsh gentleman who has published a collection of Welsh proverbs, who will help me with the Welsh.”

“But, sir,” protested Dr. Adams, “how can you do this in three years?”

“I have no doubt I can do it in three years,” asserted the sage.

“But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their dictionary.”

“Sir, thus it is,” explained Johnson. “This is the proportion. Let us see: forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three is to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.”

From first to last, Johnson worked for seven years on the dictionary. A few pages back, it was said that the Doctor had dedicated the Plan to Lord Chesterfield, himself a man of great abilities, who had wide social influence and literary ability. Somehow, Chesterfield had behaved in some manner to Johnson as to excite his anger. A story had it that one day Johnson was kept waiting in Lord Chesterfield’s ante-chamber with the footman’s explanation that company was present. Johnson sat in impatience, an impatience which changed to wrath when the door opened and Colley Cibber, a comedy actor, walked out. The sage rose in anger, left the house and never called on Lord Chesterfield again. Johnson denied that there was any truth in the story but told Boswell that “his lordship’s continued neglect was the reason why he resolved to have no connection with him.”

It must be remembered, as Leslie Stephen has pointed out, that the art of life as expounded by Lord Chesterfield in his famous letters differs from that as expounded by Johnson quite as much as “the elegant diplomatist differs from the rough intellectual gladiator of Grub Street.” So there were words. Things were said that stung. Thus:

“Johnson having now explicitly avowed his opinion of Lord
Chesterfield, did not refrain from expressing himself concerning that
nobleman with pointed freedom: ‘This man (said he) I thought had
been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!’
And when his Letters to his natural son were published, he observed
that ‘they teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing
master.’”

Literary people are not free from the vice of backbiting, scandalizing and petty talk any more than fishwives and Billingsgate porters. So we find Lord Chesterfield calling Johnson a “respectable Hottentot” and accusing him of “throwing his meat anywhere but down his throat.” And in another place, the prince of elegant conduct and behavior is quoted as having said of Johnson that he “was not only uncouth in manner and warm in dispute, but behaved exactly in the same way to superiors, equals and inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurdly to two of the three.” So the breach grew.

When, in the course of time, the dictionary neared completion, Lord Chesterfield tried in courtly manner to bridge the gulf of separation. Some have believed that he yearned to see the great work dedicated to him, others hold that he had no ulterior motive, but was frankly sorry for the indifference with which he had treated the learned author. Whatever the cause, there appeared, over his signature, two papers in the World and they contained not only a high recommendation of the work, but some studied compliments.

“I think the public in general,” it read, “and the republic of
letters in particular, are greatly obliged to Mr. Johnson for having
undertaken and executed so great and desirable a work. Perfection is
not to be expected from man; but if we are to judge by the various
works of Johnson already published, we have good reason to believe
that he will bring this to as near perfection as any man could do....

“It must be owned that our language is, at present, in a state of
anarchy, and hitherto, perhaps, it may not have been the worse for
it. During our free and open trade, many words and expressions have
been imported, adopted and naturalized from other languages which
have greatly enriched our own.... Good order and authority are now
necessary. But where shall we find them, and, at the same time,
the obedience due to them? We must have recourse to the old Roman
expedient in times of confusion, and choose a dictator. Upon this
principle, I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and
arduous post. And I hereby declare that I make a total surrender
of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free
born British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson during the term of his
dictatorship....”

It failed of its intended effect. Johnson declared that the Chesterfield letter did not ring true, was “all false and hollow,” and that he would be no man’s dupe. Straightway he composed a letter which he sent to Lord Chesterfield, and it is due to the nobleman to note that, according to his friend, Mr. Robert Dodsley, the letter “lay upon his table where anybody might see it. He (Lord Chesterfield) read it to me: said, ‘this man has great powers,’ pointed out the severest passages and observed how well they were expressed.” Johnson, having sent the letter, had a remarkable delicacy with respect to its circulation and, being asked for a copy by Lord Hardwicke, refused with a smile, saying: “No, sir; I have hurt the dog too much already.” Obviously, here were a couple of gentlemen, and possibly it would have taken but little for each to have forgiven the other. The Johnson letter follows:

“TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD.

February 7, 1755.

“My Lord,

“I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of the World, that
two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were
written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished, is an honor, which,
being very little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not
well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

“When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship,
I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment
of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast
myself _Le vainquer du vainquer de la terre_; that I might obtain
that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my
attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would
suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in
public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and
uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could, and no
man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

“Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited in your
outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time
I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which
it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the
verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of
encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not
expect, for I never had a Patron before.

“The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.

“Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has
been delayed until I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it. I
hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations where
no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.

“Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should
conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
so much exultation,

“My Lord,

“Your Lordship’s most humble
“Most obedient servant,

“SAM. JOHNSON.”

Such is the letter that Thomas Carlyle calls, “the far-famed blast of doom proclaiming into the ear of Lord Chesterfield and through him to the listening world, that patronage should be no more.” There was an aftermath of a kind, for we have it on the authority of Hawkins that Chesterfield sent two friends to Johnson with the message that were he rich enough he would settle five hundred pounds a year on Johnson, but he who was now “the great Cham of Literature,” made answer that if the first peer of the realm made such an offer, he would show him the way downstairs. “Dictionary Johnson” had won his kingdom and knew it. One thinks of Nietzsche and his saying: “For him who is born to command, humble self-effacement and self-abnegation are not virtues, but vices.”

The Dictionary concluded, Johnson rested awhile. In recognition of his services, Oxford University gave him his M. A. degree which, in 1738, was refused him. He knew that defeat at the desk which all literary workers know. “A kind of strange oblivion has spread over me,” he said in April, 1764, “so that I know not what has become of the last years, and perceive that incidents and intelligence pass over me without leaving any impression.” He was financially pinched too and in the early part of 1756, Richardson, the novelist, lent him six guineas to release him from arrest for debt. In 1759, his mother died at the age of ninety. That shocked him into activity. He borrowed twelve guineas to meet current expenses and sat down to write. In less than a week he had finished the story Rasselas, sending the sheets to the printer as they were finished, and for it he was paid a hundred pounds. The greater part of the money he spent in the liquidation of debts and for his mother’s funeral. Three years later Samuel Johnson left Grub Street with a pension of three hundred a year settled on him by King George III. “I hope,” said his friend Beauclerk, “you will now purge and live cleanly like a gentleman.”