[543] 'For the Teutonick etymologies I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner.... Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning and Skinner in rectitude of understanding.... Skinner is often ignorant, but never ridiculous: Junius is always full of knowledge, but his variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very frequently disgraced by his absurdities.' Ib. v. 29. Francis Junius the younger was born at Heidelberg in 1589, and died at Windsor, at the house of his nephew Isaac Vossius, in 1678. His Etymologicum Anglicanum was not published till 1743. Stephen Skinner, M.D., was born in 1623, and died in 1667. His Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae was published in 1671. Knight's Eng. Cycle.
[544] Thomas Richards published in 1753 Antiquae Linguae Britannicae Thesaurus, to which is prefixed a Welsh Grammar and a collection of British proverbs.
[545] See Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson [p. 171], BOSWELL.
[546] 'The faults of the book resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great fault. Johnson was a wretched etymologist.' Macaulay's Misc. Writings, p. 382. See post, May 13, 1778, for mention of Horne Tooke's criticism of Johnson's etymologies.
[547] 'The etymology, so far as it is yet known, was easily found in the volumes where it is particularly and professedly delivered ... But to COLLECT the WORDS of our language was a task of greater difficulty: the deficiency of dictionaries was immediately apparent; and when they were exhausted, what was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions into books, and gleaned as industry should find, or chance should offer it, in the boundless chaos of a living speech.' Johnson's Works, v. 31.
[548] See post, under April 10, 1776. BOSWELL.
[549] 'Mr. Macbean,' said Johnson in 1778, 'is a man of great learning, and for his learning I respect him, and I wish to serve him. He knows many languages, and knows them well; but he knows nothing of life. I advised him to write a geographical dictionary; but I have lost all hopes of his ever doing anything properly, since I found he gave as much labour to Capua as to Rome.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i, 114. See post beginning of 1773, and Oct 24, 1780.
[550] Boswell is speaking of the book published under the name of Cibber mentioned above, but 'entirely compiled,' according to Johnson, by Shiels. See post, April 10, 1776.
[551] See Piozzi Letters, i. 312, and post, May 21, 1775, note.
[552] 'We ourselves, not without labour and risk, lately discovered Gough Square.... and on the second day of search the very House there, wherein the English Dictionary was composed. It is the first or corner house on the right hand, as you enter through the arched way from the North-west ... It is a stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house: "I have spent many a pound and penny on it since then," said the worthy Landlord: "here, you see, this bedroom was the Doctor's study; that was the garden" (a plot of delved ground somewhat larger than a bed-quilt) "where he walked for exercise; these three garret bedrooms" (where his three [six] copyists sat and wrote) "were the place he kept his--pupils in": Tempus edax rerum! Yet ferax also: for our friend now added, with a wistful look, which strove to seem merely historical: "I let it all in lodgings, to respectable gentlemen; by the quarter or the month; it's all one to me."--"To me also," whispered the ghost of Samuel, as we went pensively our ways.' Carlyle's Miscellanies, edit, of 1872, iv. 112.
[553] Boswell's account of the manner in which Johnson compiled his Dictionary is confused and erroneous. He began his task (as he himself expressly described to me), by devoting his first care to a diligent perusal of all such English writers as were most correct in their language, and under every sentence which he meant to quote he drew a line, and noted in the margin the first letter of the word under which it was to occur. He then delivered these books to his clerks, who transcribed each sentence on a separate slip of paper, and arranged the same under the word referred to. By these means he collected the several words and their different significations; and when the whole arrangement was alphabetically formed, he gave the definitions of their meanings, and collected their etymologies from Skinner, Junius, and other writers on the subject. PERCY.
[554] 'The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection, a copious but a miserably ragged one, and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning, and yet some of his friends were glad to receive and entertain them as curiosities.' Hawkins, p. 175.
[555] In the copy that he thus marked of Sir Matthew Hale's Primitive Origination of Mankind, opposite the passage where it is stated, that 'Averroes says that if the world were not eternal ... it could never have been at all, because an eternal duration must necessarily have anteceded the first production of the world,' he has written:--'This argument will hold good equally against the writing that I now write.'
[556] Boswell must mean 'whose writings taken as a whole had a tendency,' &c.