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language, to trace one word from another, by Our knowledge of the northern literature is noting the usual modes of derivation and inflec- so scanty, that of words undoubtedly Teutonic, tion; and uniformity must be preserved in sys- the original is not always to be found in any antematical works; though sometimes at the ex-cient language; and I have therefore inserted pense of particular propriety. Dutch or German substitutes, which I consider not as radical, but parallel, not as the parents, but sisters of the English.

The words which are represented as thus re

Among other derivatives I have been careful to insert and elucidate the anomalous plurals of nouns and preterites of verbs, which in the Teutonic dialects are very frequent, and, though|lated by descent or cognation, do not always familiar to those who have always used them, interrupt and embarrass the learners of our language.

The two languages from which our primitives have been derived are the Roman and Teutonic: under the Roman I comprehend the French and provincial tongues; and under the Teutonic range the Saxon, German, and all their kindred dialects. Most of our polysyllables are Roman, and our words of one syllable are very often Teutonic.

In assigning the Roman original, it has perhaps sometimes happened that I have mentioned only the Latin, when the word was borrowed from the French; and considering myself as employed only in the illustration of my own language, I have not been very careful to observe whether the Latin word be pure or barbarous, or the French elegant or obsolete.

For the Teutonic etymologies, I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and Skinner in rectitude of understanding. Junius was accurately skilled in all the northern languages, Skinner probably examined the ancient and remoter dialects only by occasional inspection into dictionaries; but the learning of Junius is often of no other use than to show him a track by which he may deviate from his purpose, to which Skinner always presses forward by the shortest way. Skinner is often ignorant, but never ridiculous: Junius is always full of knowledge; but his variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very frequently disgraced by his ab

surdities.

The votaries of the northern muses will not perhaps easily restrain their indignation, when they find the name of Junius thus degraded by a disadvantageous comparison; but whatever reverence is due to his diligence, or his attainments, it can be no criminal degree of censoriousness to charge that etymologist with want of judgment, who can seriously derive dream from drama, because life is a drama, and a drama is a dream; and who declares with a tone of defiance, that no man can fail to derive moan from μovos, monos, single or solitary, who considers, that grief naturally loves to be alone.*

That I may not appear to have spoken too irreverently of Junius, I have here subjoined a few specimens of his etymological extravagance.

BANISH, religare, ex banno vel territorio exigere, in exilium agere. G. bannir. It. bandire, bandeggiare. H. bandir. B. bannen. Evi medii scriptores bannire dicebant. V. Spelin. in Bannum et in Banlenga. Quoniam verò regionem urbiumq; limites arduis plerumq; montibus, altis fluminibus, longis

agree in sense; for it is incident to words, as to their authors, to degenerate from their ancestors, and to change their manners when they change their country. It is sufficient, in etymological inquiries, if the senses of kindred words be found such as may easily pass into each other, or such as may both be referred to one general idea.

The etymology, so far as it is yet known, was easily found in the volumes, where it is particularly and professedly delivered; and, by proper attention to the rules of derivation, the orthography was soon adjusted. But to collect the Words of our language, was a task of greater difficulty: the deficiency of dictionaries was immediately apparent; and when they were exhausted, what was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions into books, and gleaned as industry should find, or chance should offer it, in the boundless chaos of a living speech. My search, however, has been either skilful or lucky; for I have much augmented the vocabulary.

As my design was a dictionary, common or appellative, I have omitted all words which have relation to proper names; such as Arian, Socinian, Calvinist, Benedictine, Mahometan; but have retained those of a more general nature, as Heathen, Pagan.

Of the terms of art I have received such as could be found either in books of science or technical dictionaries; and have often inserted, from philosophical writers, words which are supported perhaps only by a single authority, and which being not admitted into general use, stand yet as candidates or probationers, and must depend for their adoption on the suffrage of futurity.

The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ig

deniq; flexuosisq; angustissimarum viarum amfrac tibus includebantur, fieri potest id genus limites ban sicuti tradit Hesychius, vocabantur al doķol kai py lêureveis dici ab eo quod Bavvarai et Bavvarpet Tarentinis olim, bol, obliquæ ac minimè in rectum tendentes viæ." Ac fortasse quoque huc facit quod Bavovs, eodem Hesychio teste, dicebant 6on orpayyon, montes arduos.

scio an sint ab to vel iperatu. Vomo, evomo, vomitu EMPTY, emtie, vacuus, inanis. A. S. Emtig. Neevacuo. Videtur interim etymologiam hanc non obscurè firmare codex Rush. Mat. xii. 44, ubi antiquè scriptum invenimus, A. S. gemoeted hit emetig. Invenit eam

vacantem."

HILL, mons, collis. A. S. hyll. Quod videri potest abscissum ex kolory vel kolorós. Collis, tumulus, locus in plano editior. Hom. II. B. v. 811, tori dé tis mponáçußt dews almita kodway. Ubi authori brevium scholiorum

Μολωνη exp. τόπος εἰς ύψος ἀνήκων γεωλοφος έξοχη

NAP, to take a nap. Dormire, condormiscere. Cym, heppian. A. S. hnappan. Quod postremum videri potest desumptum ex xvipas, obscuritas, tenebræ nihil enim æque solet conciliare somnum, quàm caliginosa profunda noctis obscuritas.

STAMMERER, balbus, blæsus. Goth. STAMMS. A. S. stamer, stamur. D. stam. B. stameler. Su. stamma. Isl. stamr. Sunt a ropy vel or púv, nimiâ loquacitate alios offendere; quod impedite loquentes libentissimè garrire soleant; vel quòd aliis nimií semper videantur, etiam parcissimè loquentes

norance of their own, by vanity or wantonness, many verbs by a particle subjoined; as to come by compliance with fashion or lust of innova- off, to escape by a fetch; to fall on, to attack; to tion, I have registered as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others against the folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the injury of the natives.

I have not rejected any by design, merely because they were unnecessary or exuberant; but have received those which by different writers have been differently formed, as viscid, and viscidity, viscous, and viscosity.

Compounded or double words I have seldom noted, except when they obtain a signification different from that which the components have in their simple state. Thus highwayman, woodman, and horsecourser, require an explanation; but of thieflike, or coachdriver, no notice was needed, because the primitives contain the meaning of the compounds.

fall off, to apostatize; to break off, to stop abruptly; to bear out, to justify; to fall in, to comply; to give over, to cease; to set off, to embellish; to set in, to begin a continual tenor; to set out, to begin a course or journey; to take off, to copy; with innumerable expressions of the same kind, of which some appear wildly irregular, being so far distant from the sense of the simple words, that no sagacity will be able to trace the steps by which they arrived at the present use. These I have noted with great care; and though I cannot flatter myself that the collection is complete, I believe I have so far assisted the students of our language that this kind of phraseology will be no longer insuperable; and the combinations of verbs and particles, by chance omitted, will be easily explained Words arbitrarily formed by a constant and by comparison with those that may be found. settled analogy, like diminutive adjectives in ish, Many words yet stand supported only by the as greenish, bluish; adverbs in ly, as dully, name of Bailey, Ainsworth, Philips, or the conopenly; substantives in ness, as vileness, faulti-tracted Dict. for Dictionaries, subjoined; of these ness; were less diligently sought, and many I am not always certain that they are read in sometimes have been omitted, when I had no any book but the works of lexicographers. Of authority that invited me to insert them; not such I have omitted many, because I had never that they are not genuine and regular offsprings read them; and many I have inserted, because of English roots, but because their relation to they may perhaps exist, though they have escapthe primitive being always the same, their signi- ed my notice: they are, however, to be yet confication cannot be mistaken. sidered as resting only upon the credit of former dictionaries. Others, which I considered as useful, or know to be proper, though I could not at present support them by authorities, I have suffered to stand upon my own attestation, claiming the same privilege with my predecessors, of being sometimes credited without proof.

The verbal nouns in ing, such as the keeping of the castle, the leading of the army, are always neglected, or placed only to illustrate the sense of the verb, except when they signify things as well as actions, and have therefore a plural number, as dwelling, living; or have an absolute and abstract signification, as colouring, painting, learning.

The participles are likewise omitted, unless, by signifying rather habit or quality than action, they take the nature of adjectives, as a thinking man, a man of prudence; a pacing horse, a horse that can pace: these I have ventured to call participial adjectives. But neither are these always inserted, because they are commonly to be understood without any danger of mistake, by consulting the verb.

Obsolete words are admitted when they are found in authors not obsolete, or when they have any force or beauty that may deserve revival.

The words, thus selected and disposed, are grammatically considered; they are referred to the different parts of speech; traced when they are irregularly inflected, through their various terminations; and illustrated by observations, not indeed of great or striking importance, separately considered, but necessary to the elucidation of our language, and hitherto neglected or forgotten by English grammarians.

That part of my work on which I expect malignity most frequently to fasten, is the explana tion; in which I cannot hope to satisfy those who are perhaps not inclined to be pleased, since I have not always been able to satisfy myself. To interpret a language by itself, is very diffiAs composition is one of the chief character-cult; many words cannot be explained by syistics of a language, I have endeavoured to make some reparation for the universal negligence of my predecessors, by inserting great numbers of compounded words, as may be found under after, fore, new, night, fair, and many more. These, numerous as they are, might be multiplied, but that use and curiosity are here satisfied, and the frame of our language and modes of our combination amply discovered.

Of some forms of composition, such as that by which re is prefixed to note repetition, and un to signify contrariety or privation, all the examples cannot be accumulated, because the use of these particles, if not wholly arbitrary, is so little limited, that they are hourly affixed to new words as occasion requires, or is imagined to require them. There is another kind of composition more frequent in our language than perhaps in any other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty. We modify the signification of

nonymes, because the idea signified by them has not more than one appellation; nor by paraphrase, because simple ideas cannot be described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And 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. To explain, requires the use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such terms cannot always be found; for as nothing can be proved but by sup posing something intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit a definition.

Other words there are, of which the sense is too subtle and evanescent to be fixed in a para

phrase; such are all those which are by the perplexity cannot be disentangled, nor any reagrammarians termed expletives, and in dead lan-son be assigned why one should be ranged before guages are suffered to pass for empty sounds, of the other. When the radical idea branches out no other use than to fill a verse, or to modulate a period, but which are easily perceived in living tongues to have power and emphasis, though it be sometimes such as no other form of expres

sion can convey.

into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their nature collateral? The shades of meaning sometimes pass imperceptibly into each other, so that though on one side they apparently differ, yet iz is impossible to mark the point of contact. Ideas of the same race, though not exactly alike, are sometimes so little different, that no words can express the dissimilitude, though the mind easily perceives it when they are exhibited together; and sometimes there is such a confusion of acceptations, that discernment is wearied, and distinc tion puzzled, and perseverance herself hurries to an end, by crowding together what she cannot separate.

My labour has likewise been much increased by a class of verbs too frequent in the English language, of which the signification is so loose and general, the use so vague and indeterminate, and the senses detorted so widely from the first idea, that it is hard to trace them through the maze of variation, to catch them on the brink of utter inanity, to circumscribe them by any limitations, or interpret them by any words of distinct and settled meaning; such are bear, break, come, cast, full, get, give, do, put, set, go, run, These complaints of difficulty will, by those make, take, turn, throw. If of these the whole that have never considered words beyond their power is not accurately delivered, it must be re-popular use, be thought only the jargon of a man membered, that while our language is yet living, willing to magnify his labours, and procure veand variable by the caprice of every one that neration to his studies by involution and obscuspeaks it, these words are hourly shifting their rity. But every art is obscure to those that have relations, and can no more be ascertained in a not learned it; this uncertainty of terms, and dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a commixture of ideas, is well known to those who storm, can be accurately delineated from its pic- have joined philosophy with grammar; and if I ture in the water. have not expressed them very clearly, it must be remembered that I am speaking of that which words are insufficient to explain.

The particles are among all nations applied with so great latitude, that they are not easily reducible under any regular scheme of explication; this difficulty is not less, nor perhaps greater in English, than in other languages. I have laboured them with diligence, I hope with success; such at least as can be expected in a task, which no man, however learned or sagacious, has yet been able to perform.

The original sense of words is often driven out of use by their metaphorical acceptations, yet must be inserted for the sake of a regular origination. Thus I know not whether ardour is used for material heat, or whether flagrant, in English, ever signifies the same with burning; yet such are the primitive ideas of these words, which are therefore set first, though without examples, that the figurative senses may be commodiously deduced.

Some words there are which I cannot explain, because I do not understand them; these might have been omitted very often with little inconvenience, but I would not so far indulge my vanity as to decline this confession; for when Tully owns himself ignorant whether lessus, in the twelve tables, means a funeral song or mourning garment; and Aristotle doubts whether oupcus in the Iliad signifies a mule or muleteer, I may surely, without shame, leave some obscurities to hap-train of derivation. In any case of doubt or pier industry, or future information.

names.

Such is the exuberance of signification which many words have obtained, that it was scarcely possible to collect all their senses; sometimes the meaning of derivatives must be sought in the mother term, and sometimes deficient explanations of the primitive may be supplied in the

difficulty, it will be always proper to examine all the words of the same race; for some words are slightly passed over to avoid repetition, some admitted easier and clearer explanation than others, and all will be better understood, as they are considered in greater variety of structures and relations.

The rigour of interpretative lexicography requires that the explanation and the word explained should be always reciprocal; this I have always endeavoured, but could not always attain. Words are seldom exactly synonymous; a new term was not introduced but because the former was thought inadequate; names, therefore, have All the interpretations of words are not writoften many ideas, but few ideas have many ten with the same skill, or the same happiness: It was then necessary to use the proxi-things equally easy in themselves, are not all mate word, for the deficiency of single terms can equally easy to any single mind. Every writer very seldom be supplied by circumlocution; nor of a long work commits errors, where there apis the inconvenience great of such mutilated in- pears neither ambiguity to mislead, nor obscuterpretations, because the sense may easily be rity to confound him; and in a search like this, collected entire from the examples. many felicities of expression will be casually overlooked, many convenient parallels will be forgotten, and many particulars will admit improvement from a mind utterly unequal to the whole performance.

In every word of extensive use, it was requisite to mark the progress of its meaning, and show by what gradations of intermediate sense it has passed from its primitive to its remote and accidental signification; so that every foregoing explanation should tend to that which follows, and the series be regularly concatenated from the first notion to the last.

This is specious, but not always practicable; kindred senses inay be so interwoven, that the

But many seeming faults are to be imputed rather to the nature of the undertaking than the negligence of the performer. Thus some explanations are unavoidably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the female of the stag; stag, the male of the hind: sometimes easier words are changed

ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

into harder, as, burial into sepulture or interment, [diously endeavoured to collect examples and
drier into desiccative, dryness into sicity or aridity, authorities from the writers before the Resto-
fit into paroxysm; for the easiest word, what-ration, whose works I regard as "the wells of
ever it be, can never be translated into one more English undefiled," as the pure sources of ge-
easy. But easiness and difficulty are merely re-nuine diction. Our language, for almost a cen-
lative; and if the present prevalence of our
language should invite foreigners to this Diction-
ary, many will be assisted by those words which
now seem only to increase or produce obscurity.
For this reason I have endeavoured frequently
to join a Teutonic and Roman interpretation,
as to cheer, to gladden, or exhilarate, that every
learner of English may be assisted by his own
tongue.

The solution of all difficulties, and the supply
of all defects, must be sought in the examples,
subjoined to the various senses of each word,
and ranged according to the time of their authors.
When I first collected these authorities, I was
desirous that every quotation should be useful
to some other end than the illustration of a word;
I therefore extracted from philosophers, princi-
ples of science; from historians, remarkable
facts; from chemists, complete processes; from
divines, striking exhortations; and from poets,
beautiful descriptions. Such is design, while
it is yet at a distance from execution. When
the time called upon me to range this accumula-
tion of elegance and wisdom into an alphabeti-
cal series, I soon discovered that the bulk of my
volumes would fright away the student, and
was forced to depart from my scheme of includ-
ing all that was pleasing or useful in English
literature, and reduce my transcripts very often
to clusters of words, in which scarcely any
meaning is retained; thus to the weariness of
copying, I was condemned to add the vexation
of expunging. Some passages I have yet spared,
which may relieve the labour of verbal searches,
and intersperse with verdure and flowers the
dusty deserts of barren philology.

The examples, thus mutilated, are no longer
to be considered as conveying the sentiments or
doctrine of their authors; the word for the sake
of which they are inserted, with all its appen-
dant clauses, has been carefully preserved; but
it may sometimes happen, by hasty detrunca-
tion, that the general tendency of the sentence
may be changed; the divine may desert his
tenets, or the philosopher his system.

Some of the examples have been taken from writers who were never mentioned as masters of elegance, or models of style; but words must be sought where they are used; and in what pages, eminent for purity, can terms of manufacture or agriculture be found? Many quotations serve no other purpose than that of proving the bare existence of words, and are therefore selected with less scrupulousness than those which are to teach their structures and relations.

My purpose was to admit no testimony of living authors, that I might not be misled by partiality, and that none of my contemporaries might have reason to complain; nor have I departed from this resolution, but when some performance of uncommon excellence excited my veneration, when my memory supplied me, from late books, with an example that was wanting, or when my heart, in the tenderness of friendship, solicited admission for a favourite name.

So far have I been from any care to grace my pages with modern decorations, that I have stu

[graphic]

tury, has, by the concurrence of many causes,
been gradually departing from its original Teu-
tonic character, and deviating towards a Gallic
structure and phraseology, from which it ought
to be our endeavour to recall it, by making our
ancient volumes the groundwork of style, ad-
mitting among the additions of later times, only
such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are
readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and
incorporate easily with our native idioms.

But as every language has a time of rudeness
antecedent to perfection, as well as of false re-
finement and declension, I have been cautious
lest my zeal for antiquity might drive me into
times too remote, and crowd my book with
From the authors
words now no longer understood. I have fixed
Sidney's work for the boundary, beyond which
I make few excursions.
which rose in the time of Elizabeth, a speech
might be formed adequate to all the purposes of
use and elegance. If the language of theology
were extracted from Hooker and the translation
of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge
from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and
navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry
and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the
diction of common life from Shakspeare, few
ideas would be lost to mankind, for want of
English words in which they might be ex-
pressed.

It is not sufficient that a word is found, unless it be so combined as that its meaning is apparently determined by the tract and tenor of the sentence; such passages I have therefore chosen; definition of a term, or such an explanation as is and when it happened that any author gave a equivalent to a definition, I have placed his authority as a supplement to my own, without regard to the chronological order that is otherwise observed.

Some words, indeed, stand unsupported by any authority, but they are commonly derivative nouns or adverbs, formed from their primiof things seldom occurring in books, or words of tives by regular and constant analogy, or names There is more danger of censure from the which I have reason to doubt the existence. multiplicity than paucity of examples; authorities will sometimes seem to have been accumulated without necessity or use, and perhaps some will be found, which might, without loss, have been omitted. But a work of this kind is not hastily to be charged with superfluities; those quotations, which to careless or unskilful perusers appear only to repeat the same sense, will often exhibit, to a more accurate examiner, diversities of signification, or, at least, afford different shades of the same meaning: one will show the word applied to persons, another to things; one will express an ill, another a good, and a third a neutral sense; one will prove the expression genuine from an ancient author; another will show it elegant from a modern: a more credit; an ambiguous sentence is ascer doubtful authority is corroborated by another of tained by a passage clear and determinate; the word, how often soever repeated, appears with

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new associates and in different combinations, words, I resolved to show likewise my attention and every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language. When words are used equivocally, I receive them in either sense; when they are metaphorical, I adopt them in their primitive acceptation. I have sometimes, though rarely, yielded to the temptation of exhibiting a genealogy of sentiments, by showing how one author copied the thoughts and diction of another; such quotations are indeed little more than repetitions, which might justly be censured, did they not gratify the mind, by affording a kind of intellectual history.

to things; to pierce deep into every science, to inquire the nature of every substance of which I inserted the name, to limit every idea by a definition strictly logical, and exhibit every production of art or nature in an accurate description, that my book might be in place of all other dictionaries, whether appellative or technical. But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. I soon found that it is too late to look for instruments, when the work calls for execution, and that whatever abilities I had brought to my task, with those I must finally perform it. To deliberate whenever I doubtThe various syntactical structures occurring ed, to inquire whenever I was ignorant, would in the examples have been carefully noted; the have protracted the undertaking without end, license or negligence with which many words and, perhaps, without much improvement; for ĺ have been hitherto used, has made our style ca- did not find by my first experiments, that what pricious and indeterminate; when the different I had not of my own was easily to be obtained; combinations of the same word are exhibited I saw that one inquiry only gave occasion to together, the preference is readily given to pro-another, that book referred to book, that to priety, and I have often endeavoured to direct the choice.

Thus have I laboured by settling the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the signification of English words, to perform all the parts of a faithful lexicographer; but I have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations. The work, whatever proofs of diligence and attention it may exhibit, is yet capable of many improvements: the orthography which I recommend is still controvertible; the etymology which I adopt is uncertain, and perhaps frequently erroneous; the explanations are sometimes too much contracted, and sometimes too much diffused; the significations are distinguished rather with subtilty than skill, and the attention is harassed with unnecessary minuteness.

The examples are too often injudiciously truncated, and perhaps sometimes, hope very rarely, alleged in a mistaken sense; for in making this collection I trusted more to memory, than, in a state of disquiet and embarrassment, memory can contain, and purposed to supply at the review what was left incomplete in the first transcription.

Many terms appropriated to particular occupations, though necessary and significant, are undoubtedly omitted; and of the words most studiously considered and exemplified, many senses have escaped observation.

Yet these failures, however frequent, may admit extenuation and apology. To have attempted much is always laudable, even when the enterprise is above the strength that undertakes it. To rest below his own aim, is incident to every one whose fancy is active, and whose views are comprehensive; nor is any man satisfied with himself because he has done much, but because he can conceive little. When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in the feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern learning which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus inquired into the original of

search was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to pursue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them.

I then contracted my design, determining to confide in myself, and no longer to solicit auxiliaries, which produced more incumbrance than assistance; by this I obtained at least one advantage, that I set limits to my work, which would in time be ended, though not completed.

Despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress me to negligence; some faults will at last appear to be the effects of anxious diligence and persevering activity. The nice and subtle ramifications of meaning were not easily avoided by a mind intent upon accuracy, and convinced of the necessity of disentangling combinations, and separating similitudes. Many of the distinctions which to common readers appear useless and idle, will be found real and important by men versed in the school of philosophy, without which no dictionary can ever be accurately compiled, or skilfully examined.

Some senses however there are, which, though not the same, are yet so nearly allied, that they are often confounded. Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness; and consequently some examples might be indifferently put to either signification: this uncertainty is not to be imputed to me, who do not form, but register the language; who do not teach men how they should think, but relate how they have hitherto expressed their thoughts.

The imperfect sense of some examples I lamented, but could not remedy, and hope they will be compensated by innumerable passages selected with propriety, and preserved with exactness; some shining with sparks of imagi nation, and some replete with treasures of wisdom.

The orthography and etymology, though imperfect, are not imperfect for want of care, but because care will not always be successful, and recollection or information come too late for use.

That many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, must be frankly acknowledged; but for this defect I may boldly allege that it was unavoidable; I could not visit caverns to learn

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