[852] Ib. p. 51.
[853] See post, under May 19, 1777.
[854] See ante, p. 186, note 5.
[855] He defines both towards the wind. The definitions remain unchanged in the fourth edition, the last corrected by Johnson, and also in the third edition of the abridgment, though this abridgment was made by him. Pastern also remains unaltered in this latter edition. In the fourth edition he corrected it. 'The drawback of his character,' wrote Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'is entertaining prejudices on very slight foundations; giving an opinion, perhaps, first at random, but from its being contradicted he thinks himself obliged always to support it, or, if he cannot support, still not to acquiesce. Of this I remember an instance of a defect or forgetfulness in his Dictionary. I asked him how he came not to correct it in the second edition. "No," says he, "they made so much of it that I would not flatter them by altering it."' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 461.
[856] In his Preface (Works, v. 50) he anticipated errors and laughter. 'A few wild blunders and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter and harden ignorance into contempt' In a letter written nearly thirty years later he said:—'Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 406.
[857] See post, under July 20, 1762.
[858] 'Network. Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.' Reticulated is defined 'Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.'
[859] 'That part of my work on which I expect malignity most frequently to fasten is the Explanation…. Such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated.' Johnson's Works, v. 34.
[860] In the original, 'to admit a definition.' Ib.
[861] In the original, 'drier.' Ib. 38.