set his desk in order, and betake himself to serious study; but a retentive memory will do something, and a fellow shall have strange credit given him, if he can but recollect striking passages from different books, keep the authors separate in his head, and bring his stock of knowledge artfully into play[1]: How else (added he) do the gamesters[2] manage when they play for more money than they are worth?' His Dictionary, however, could not, one would think, have been written by running up and down; but he really did not consider it as a great performance; and used to say, 'that he might have done it easily in two years, had not his health received several shocks during the time[3].'
When Mr. Thrale, in consequence of this declaration, teized him in the year 1768 to give a new edition of it, because (said he) there are four or five gross faults[4]: 'Alas, Sir (replied
- ↑ It was by this method that at Fort George he talked with the officers of granulating gunpowder, 'and made a very good figure upon these topicks.' Life, v. 124.
- ↑ Gamester has been long supplanted by gambler, under which word Johnson writes in his Dictionary, 'a cant word (I suppose) for game and gamester.'
- ↑ He told Dr. Adams that he expected to do it in three years. Ib. i. 186. He took seven or eight. We have no account of his ill-health during that time. His wife's long illness and death came in the midst, and so too did all his Ramblers.
- ↑ In the Scots Magazine for 1761, p. 693, is a short list of words with the following heading: – 'A Scotch gentleman caused a friend wait of [sic] Mr. Johnson with a list of words suspected to be wrong accented in his dictionary; and was favoured with the following corrections marked by Mr. Johnson's own hand.' The errors seem to have been most, if not all, those of the printer.
When Reynolds asked him why he had not in his second edition corrected a certain error, he replied, 'No, they made so much of it that I would not flatter them by altering it.' Life, i. 293, n. 2. In the Abridgement which he made himself the erroneous definition of pastern remains, and leeward and windward are still both defined as towards the wind. In Murray's Johnsoniana, 1836, p. 467, an error in a reference is pointed out which has not been
world," as he expressed it, more almost than any body.' Life, i. 215.
A writer in the Monthly Review, N. S. xx. p. 21, who had known Johnson, says: – 'He always preferred conversation to reading, though it were with the lowest mechanics; and he constantly listened to professional men with respect. His disputes were chiefly with those pretenders to that knowledge and science of which he was himself at least equally qualified to judge.' Quoted in Anderson's Johnson, ed. 1815, p. 475.
