on, not one appears to have engaged his future attention. Among the reft he had purpofed to give a history of the revival of learning in Europe, and also a comparison of philofophical and christian morality, by fentences collected from the moralifts and fathers*. The former of thefe, as it required the labour of deep research, and the perufal of a great variety of authors, was a work that we may fuppofe he was deterred from by frequent reflections on the pains it would cost him; but that he should abandon a work so easy in the execution, and fo much to the credit of the religion he profeffed, as the latter, is not lefs to be wondered at than lamented.

Thefe projects of Johnson were most of them refolved on in his earlier days, but it is not improbable that he was induced to give them up by the profpect of the gain that might arife from the publication of a new edition of Shakespeare, which it is certain he meditated, about the year 1745. To an undertaking of this kind the temptations were very strong, for, befides that the former editors had fallen fhort in their endeavours to explain and fettle the text, he had great reason to hope it would be well received, for at that time it was obfervable, that the taste of the public was refining, and that the lovers of stage entertainments and dramatic literature had begun to naufeate the tragedies and comedies of the laft age, which were formed after French models, and to difcern the beauties and excellencies of this author.

* Vide fupra, page 83, 84. in not.
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That

That this hope was not ill-grounded, may rea fonably be inferred from the fuccefs of those many editions of this author that have appeared fince the above time, of one whereof above eleven thousand copies have been fold, and next, from the effects of Mr, Garrick's acting, which had revived the exhibition of Shakespeare's plays, and excited readers of every class to the perufal of them.

But, perhaps, the greatest of Johnson's temptations to this undertaking, saving at all times his neceffities, was, a defire to display his skill in English literature and rational criticifm in their wideft extent, in both which requifites the deficiences of the former editions were obvious. Of those of the players and others, down to the year 1685, little in favour can be. faid: the first that made any pretenfions to correctness. was that of Rowe in 1709, and next to that, Mr. Pope's in 4to, 1723. Whatever other were the merits of these two perfons, it is certain that neither of them was fufficiently qualified for the task he had undertaken; not that they wanted the power of difcerning the excellences of their author, or clearing his page of many corruptions that had long obfcured his fenfe, but that they were deficient in that lower kind of literature, without which all endeavours to fix or explain the text of an old writer will ever be found to be vain.

To this kind of knowledge, as far as may be judged from the course of his ftudies, and indeed from the preface to his edition, Rowe had not the least pretenfion. Nor does it appear that Pope was at all converfant with, or that he understood the phrafeology

of

of the writers contemporary with his author. So little was he used to that kind of reading, that, as himself confeffed, he had never heard of the Virgidemiarum of bishop Hall, a collection of the wittiest and most pointed fatires in our language, till it was fhewn to him, and that fo late in his life, that he could only exprefs his approbation of it by a wifh that he had seen it fooner. That vernacular erudition, contemptible as it has been represented, is an indifpenfable qualification for the reftoring or explaining the sense of corrupted or obfolete authors, and even of those more recent, is most clearly evidenced in one cafe by the later editions of our great dramatic poet, and in the other by Dr. Grey's edition of Hudibras, without the affiftance whereof, the many allufions to facts, circumftances, and fituations therein contained, muft for ever have remained unintelligible. Theobald was the first of this class of editors. For the purpose of publishing Shakespeare, he, in the preface to his first edition, afferts, that he had read no fewer than eight hundred old English plays, besides histories and novels to a great amount ; and the fame kind of study has, with different degrees of affiduity, been pursued by others, even to the last of his fucceffors.

With these inducements, and the aid of two valuable editions then extant, Theobald's and that of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Johnfon projected a new one, and, as a specimen of his abilities for the undertaking, published in the year 1745, Mifcellaneous obfervations on the tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition of Shakespeare,' with proposals for one by himself. These obfervations, as

they go rather to adjust the various readings, and fettle the text by conjectural notes, than explain allufions, did not enough attract the notice of the public to induce him actually to engage in the work; they were however evidences of great fagacity, and drew from Dr. Warburton a teftimony that fet him above all other competitors; for thus does he fpeak of Johnfon: As to all thofe things which have been published under 'the titles of Effays, Remarks, Obfervations, &c. on Shakespeare, (if you except fome critical notes on Macbeth, given as a specimen of a projected edition, and written as appears by a man of parts and genius) the reft are abfolutely below a ferious notice;' and Johnfon, who never forgot a kindness, remembered it by mentioning Warburton in terms of great refpect, as occafion offered, in his edition of Shakespeare, which he published many years after.

By this and other of Johnfon's writings, his reputation as a scholar and a philologist was so well established, that the bookfellers of greateft opulence in the city, who had long meditated the publication of a dictionary, after the model of thofe,of France and the Academia della Crufca, looked upon him as a fit perfon to be employed in fuch an undertaking. He was at that time in the vigour of his life, and by the offer of a liberal reward from men of fuch known worth as thofe were who made it, was tempted to engage with them, and accordingly fet himself to compile that work, which, he living to complete it, does him and all concerned in it great honour.

Nor can we fuppofe but that he was in a great meafure incited to the profecution of this laborious work

by

by a reflection on the state of our language at this time, from the imperfection of all English dictionaries then extant, and the great distance in point of improvement in this kind of literature between us and fome of our neighbours. And here let me take occafion, by an enumeration of the feveral authors that had gone before him, to point out the fources of that intelligence which Johnfon's voluminous work

contains.

Of Latin dictionaries and fuch as give the fignifications of English appellatives with a view only to illuftrate the Latin, he must be fuppofed to have made fome ufe, and of thefe the earlieft is Sir Thomas Elyot's Bibliotheca Eliotæ, published in 1541. This was improved by Cooper after many years' labor, by the addition of 33000 words, and published in 1565 in a large folio, and was a reason with Queen Elizabeth for promoting him to the bishopric of Lincoln.*

In 1572 was published an Alvearie or quadruple dictionary of four fundry tongues, namely, English, Latin, Greek and French, by John Baret of Cambridge, compiled with the affiftance of his pupils, but arranged and methodized by himfelf. This fact he ingenuously

* The following fact respecting this work remains upon record, viz. that his wife burnt the notes that he had been eight years gathering, and that he was other eight years in gathering the fame notes wherewith he compofed his dictionary. Her pretence was fear that he should kill himself with ftudy; but fhe was a fhrew and infamous for lewdness.

confeffed

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