the expressions, to find which recourse is had to the Thesaurus, lie on an ill-defined border land between one category and another; and it is not always easy, even with the aid of a carefully compiled index, to determine under which of several allied headings they should be sought. In the present edition, when the inquirer has once started on his voyage of discovery, the references enable him to pass freely from one division to another without recurring to the Index.
While endeavouring to pay due regard to the author’s disposition of all the words which he had proposed to add to the Thesaurus, or to repeat in its pages, I have thus sought rather to connect than to separate the several parts of the work, and, without obscuring the independence of each by too much blending, to combine them in an entire structure which might adequately represent the complex vocabulary of our language.
Many new words have also been inserted which were not contained in the author’s manuscript.
Except in a very few cases, where distinct ideas were obviously united under one head, I have not had the presumption to meddle with the author’s division into categories; but, within each category, I have endeavoured to carry somewhat further the sorting of words according to the ideas which they convey. I should not, indeed, have deemed myself qualified to undertake the present task, except under a conviction that the improvements which I contemplated were almost entirely of a practical nature, demanding industry and attention, rather than philosophic culture or the learning of a philologist. My main object has been to place in the hands of all who employ the Thesaurus the most ready means of availing themselves of the enlarged collection of words and phrases which it now contains, and thus to render the search for appropriate expressions as easy and as short as possible, consistently with the greatest practicable extension of the field of inquiry.
With these objects in view, I have supplied the work with a new and elaborate Index, much more complete than that which was appended to the previous editions. Although, in the original design of his work, the author appears to have conceived the process of search for a required expression as one, in which the system of classification would be first consulted, and the Index afterwards called in aid if necessary,[1] I believe that almost everyone who uses the
- ↑ See Introduction, p. xvii. The original catalogue of words in manuscript which was the germ of the Thesaurus, and is now in my possession, contains no verbal index.
