"Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before....
Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Publick should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself."
This fine piece of snubbing, written, as Johnson said, in defensive pride, became "the talk of the town." But Johnson did not wish it to be public property. When Lord Hardwicke expressed a wish to read it, he "declined to comply with the request, saying, with a smile 'No, Sir; I have hurt the dog too much already.'"
"The Dictionary" says Boswell "with a Grammar and History of the English Language being now at length published, in two volumes folio, the world contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work achieved by one man."
We, too, may do the same, though we may be frightened, rather than attracted, by the sentence which Boswell selects from the Preface as a model of clearness and choice of words:
"When the radical idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their own nature collateral?"
We shall do better to choose one or two of the passages which should move us even now, when we picture to ourselves the years of industry and poverty in the gloomy Gough Square house: "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add anything by my own writings to the reputation of English literature must be left to time."
"I deliver my book to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavoured well.... In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow."
The Dictionary itself is not, of course, to be compared in fulness or accuracy with the latest monument of lexicography which we find on library shelves to-day—any more than Marlborough's artillery can be compared with a modern howitzer.