It is a great letter too long to quote in its entirety and it must have crushed, utterly, a man less vain and complacent than the man to whom it was addressed. Carlyle called it a 'blast of doom, proclaiming into the ears of Lord Chesterfield, and through him to the listening world, that patronage should be no more.' It was indeed a Declaration of Independence.

The book appeared in two large folio volumes, on February 20, 1755. It was a time of profound depression for Johnson: he had, as he said, 'devoted the labor of years, to the honor of my country that we may no longer yield the palm of philology without a contest to the nations of the continent,' but, as he also said, 'I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss the book with frigid tranquillity having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.'

II

In this brief paper I shall not attempt to conceal the fact that I regard the present great esteem which the world our world, that is has for Dr. Johnson, his Life, and his works, with some amusement. It may be that I am to some extent responsible for it: at any rate, if you enter any good bookshop in England and ask for any book by Dr. Johnson in first edition you will almost certainly be met with a sad shake of the head and the remark that Johnson, in first editions, is almost impossible except at prohibitive prices, and that this advance is due to the American demand. And then you may be told as I have been, more than once that 'a man in Philadelphia is largely responsible for Johnson's being collected; before he began to write

about him, Boswell's Life, a big ugly book in two volumes, was hard to sell at three guineas; there was no more demand for Johnson's Dictionary than there was for Fox's Martyrs, and now you can't get them fast enough.'

Forty years ago my friends used to say, by way of disconcerting me, 'Eddie, tell us something about Dr. Johnson,' and usually I did so, for I had just fallen under the spell of Boswell and was by way — as far as a man with a treacherous memory could be — of knowing him by heart. It is a happy possession and affords one an apt quotation in every conceivable discussion and upon every possible occasion. Have you a difficult business matter to discuss? Do it after a good dinner and not before: remember what Dr. Johnson says: 'Sir, a good dinner lubricates business.'

Since then I have met many Johnsonians, and have come to believe that all Johnsonians are good fellows, 'clubable' men, as Dr. Johnson would say, and as the years passed and I came to know wiser and better Johnsonians than myself this suspicion became conviction. Finally came the desire to own, and in some measure to know, the books of the Great Lexicographer himself.

-

But I remember that my copy of the first edition of Boswell's Life was purchased for twenty dollars, a good copy cannot now be had for less than three hundred, and the first Rasselas I ever bought cost me but ten, and the last, two hundred. And as for the Dictionary-well, Mrs. ThralePiozzi's copy, probably given her by Johnson, with her inscription and a fine holograph letter from the Lexicographer, cost me only sixty dollars; and a fine copy in boards, uncut, thirty-five! Taking a census of the Johnson Dictionaries now in my library, I find

Let me explain. One copy I bought to show people to whom one copy is as good as another: this saves wear and tear on the copies I highly value. Two came in this way. On the fifteenth of February, last year, my great friend and fellow Johnsonian, Mr. R. B. Adam of Buffalo, had a sale at the Anderson Galleries in New York of a portion of his library not of his wonderful Johnson collection, but of books of which he had tired or which did not fit into the period which he has made peculiarly his own. With the idea of paying him homage, I gave a little dinner in New York, the first night of the sale, to a small group of friends and booksellers (friends also). It was a speedy affair: including speeches, we were at the table just one hour and fifteen minutes, and it may be remembered by those present that Mr. Owen D. Young-that accomplished gentleman who, in company with General Dawes, brought order out of chaos in Germany - signally failed to secure a hearing at our little dinner party; whereupon the meeting adjourned to the auction room.

The sale had just begun, and as we took our seats my wife joined my friend Mr. William Jay Turner, who had been one of my party, and I took a seat in the back part of the room next to Walter Hill, the Chicago bookseller, and immediately bought a book I did n't want just to prevent him from getting it. (He did n't want it either.) We were in just the form that brings

joy to the heart of an auctioneer. The books were fine and the sale went merrily.

After a time a copy of the Dictionary, first edition, two volumes, old calf, was put up, and I saw at once that it was not not Adam's best copy: it was what might be called 'a spare.' The bidding started at fifty dollars, went to one hundred and fifty, - the then proper price for the book, then more slowly to three hundred; and finally it was knocked down at three hundred and twenty dollars to — of all people in the world—my wife, who wanted it as a souvenir of a pleasant evening. Whereupon, discovering that my friend Turner was the runner-up, he wanted the book for the same reason my wife did, and would have paid any amount had he not discovered that he was in competition with Mrs. Newton, I rose and assured all present that there was, obviously, no 'knock-out' in the room and the sale went on.

Subsequently, in talking over the events of the evening, which is one of the delights of a good auction, Jay Turner asked me to watch my chance and pick up for him a good copy of the Dictionary, which I promised to do. Several months later, in the catalogue of an English bookseller, I noticed a copy- Mrs. Vesey's copy-priced at forty pounds, and I at once cabled for it. Mr. Vesey was a member of 'the Club' founded by Dr. Johnson, was elected through the influence of Edmund Burke; and it was Mrs. Vesey who gave the famous bluestocking parties. She did n't wear blue stockings herself a man by the name of Stillingfleet wore them; Mrs. Vesey's were what they were; certainly not the skin-colored kind so much in evidence to-day. Her copy of the Dictionary, then, was one which Dr. Johnson might have seen in the library

in her house in Clarges Street, and, conceivably, the not too Reverend Laurence Sterne might have referred to it to settle some disputed point in conversation-for, it will be remembered, he was much with Mrs. Vesey, on whom he was very sweet, as he was on every other pretty and attractive woman he met.

Here, then, was a copy of the Dictionary with a 'provenance' of which anyone might be proud, and I certainly hoped to get it; but in due course I received a letter from the bookseller saying that he was sorry he could not send me the desired item, as an hour before my cable arrived he had received a cable from Mr. Adam of Buffalo, to whom the volume must be dispatched. "That settles that,' said I.

But not so. A month later a bulky bulky package arrived at my office; opening it, I found Mrs. Vesey's copy of the Dictionary, and a wonderful letter from Adam telling me that he had immediately made up his mind not to take my wife's money for his copy of the Dictionary (she had paid for it out of the household account, and we had been living on short rations); that this was a better copy; that it had once belonged to a famous lady and had her signature and bookplate; that it was bound in three volumes, with a separate title-page for the third volume, to be easier for reference; and, finally, that I was to take the copy which had once been his, and upon some suitable occasion to present it with his compliments to the Shakspere Society of Philadelphia, over which my friend Dr. Furness presides with such distinction. Here, then, was a very pretty 'amenity,' which Johnson defines as 'an agreeableness of situation,' - and such are not of infrequent occurrence among those who play at this book-collecting game.

III

It is a wonderful book, is Dr. Johnson's Dictionary; and think of the circumstances under which it was composed: 'with,' as its author says, 'little assistance of the learned; without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.' 'What do you read, my lord?' 'Words, words, words,' replies Hamlet. Buckle read it through to enlarge his vocabulary; so did Browning; and no other dictionary can be read with such pleasure and profit, for in it Johnson gave- and for the first time quotations from esteemed authors illustrating the use of words he defined. He fitted himself for this mighty task by diligent reading, underscoring with a pencil the selections which were subsequently copied out on slips of paper by his amanuenses: his marvelous memory, of course, stood him in good stead, while the range of his reading was boundless. And yet he always spoke and thought of himself as lazy. One day, entering Mrs. Thrale's drawing-room and seeing her dog asleep before the fire, he remarked, 'Presto, you are, if possible, a lazier dog than I am.'

Every reader of Boswell will remember the kindly interest that Johnson took in Fanny Burney: how he called her his 'Little Burney,' and extolled her first and only good

novel to the skies; saying it was superior to the work of Fielding and equal to that of Richardson. I have always thought this excessive eulogy was by way of return for the interest her father had shown him at the time the Dictionary was published. Charles Burney, not yet the distinguished Doctor of Music which he subsequently became, was then living in

Norfolk. He does not appear to have known Johnson personally, but to have made his acquaintance through his Ramblers. When the Dictionary was announced in the newspapers, he wrote Johnson a kindly letter and offered to subscribe for six copies for himself and his friends. I have an autograph letter in Johnson's hand, in which he says, 'I was bred a bookseller and have not forgotten my trade,' but he was not soliciting orders for his book, and asked that Mr. Burney direct his inquiries to Mr. Dodsley, 'because it was by his recommendation that he was employed in the work.' But note the modesty of the great man: 'When you have looked into my Dictionary, if you find faults I shall endeavour to mend them; if you find none I shall think you blinded by kind partiality.'

Then followed further letters on the subject, and seemingly Mr. Burney was insistent that he be sent a prospectus, order forms, and the like what we would to-day call 'literature' on the subject. A letter has recently come into my hands, from which I must quote, as it shows only too clearly Johnson's habit of procrastination and at least one reason for his depression. This letter is addressed from Gough Square to Mr. Burney, and reads, in part:

SIR,

That I may shew myself sensible of your favours, and not commit the same fault a second time I make haste to answer the letter which I received this morning. The truth is, the other likewise was received, and I wrote an answer, but being desirous to transmit you some proposals and receipts, I waited till I could find a convenient conveyance, and day was passed after day, till other things drove it from my thoughts, yet not so, but that I remember with great pleasure your commendation of my dictionary. Your praise was welcome not only because I believe it was sincere, but because praise has been very scarce. A man of your

candour will be surprised when I tell you that among all my acquaintance there were only two who upon the publication of my book did not endeavour to depress me with threats of censure from the publick, or with objections learned from those who had learned them from my own preface. Yours is the only letter of goodwill that I have yet received, though indeed I am promised something of that sort from Sweden.

Can we wonder at the great man's depression? Years of work rewarded by poverty and neglect, and one letter of goodwill and a promise of something from Sweden. The day of the patron was past, and the day of the logroller had not yet come.

Slowly, and by degrees, Johnson's Dictionary became a best seller, and a best seller it remained for almost a century. 'What I like about your Dictionary, Mr. Johnson,' said one old lady to him, 'is that it has no naughty words in it.' 'Madam, I hope you have not been looking for them,' replied the Lexicographer. And to another, who remarked that for steady reading it changes the subject pretty often, Johnson admitted that it had that fault in common with most dictionaries. Again, to someone who said that the word 'ocean' was omitted, he replied, 'Madam, you will look for it in vain if you spell it o-s-h-u-n.' Garrick, his old friend and former pupil, broke into verse about it, and so marvelous an actor was the little man that his cleverness as a poet of occasional verse has never been fully recognized. Let me quote his lines:

Talk of war with a Briton, he'll boldly advance, That one English soldier will beat ten of France; Would we alter the boast from the sword to the

Let them rally their heroes, send forth all their pow'rs,

Their verse-men, and prose-men; then match them with ours!

First Shakespeare and Milton, like gods in the fight,

Have put their whole drama and epic to flight; In satires, epistles, and odes would they cope, Their numbers retreat before Dryden and Pope; And Johnson, well arm'd, like a hero of yore, Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more.

IV

Some of Johnson's definitions have given the world amusement since the day of publication. Let me give a few examples.

A blister sounds worse than it is: he defines it as 'a pustule formed by raising the cuticle from the cutis, and filled with serous blood.'

Buxom, now understood to mean 'plump and comely,' was defined thus: 'It originally signified obedient. Before the reformation the bride in the marriage service promised to be obedient and buxom in bed and at board.' Alas! the word has gone, and ‘obey' is going, we are told. I am against change in any form and would put 'em both back.

Johnson's opportunity of studying wild animals at close range was slight, even had his eyesight been good. A camelopard 'is an Abyssinian animal taller than an elephant but not so thick. He is so named because he has a neck and head like a camel; he is spotted like a pard' (a pard is a leopard) 'but his spots are white upon a red ground. The Italians call him a giaraffa.'

Cant was particularly offensive to Johnson, and he was frequently heard to say, when in heated argument with a friend, 'Clear your mind of cant' which was a whining pretension to goodness, in formal and affected terms.'

A chicken was, among other things, 'a term for a young girl.' You have

seen a chicken flap its wings: hence 'flapper,' the word of to-day; and I have observed as I get older that flappers get better-looking and wear fewer clothes.

Much danger lurks in a cough: it is 'a convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity.' There is a priceless poem - and a poem is 'sense enriched by sound'- which I wish Dr. Johnson could have known:

To cough and sneeze
Will spread disease.
So does spit;
Take care of it.

Perhaps because Johnson was himself an essayist, he does not rate that form of composition highly. An essay he calls 'a loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.'

The thought of death in any form was at all times abhorrent to him; hence we are not surprised to learn that death's-door 'is now a low phrase.'

The definition of excise is one of the Doctor's most famous: 'A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged, not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.' This definition roused to fury the Commissioners of Excise, who sought the opinion of the Attorney-General, afterward Lord Mansfield, whether or not it was libelous. He thought that it was, but wisely suggested that the author be allowed an opportunity of altering his definition; it was not changed.

One definition of favourite is 'a mean wretch whose whole business is by any means to please.'

Grubstreet: 'Originally the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems." The street still exists, but it is now Milton Street not named after the