the miner's language, nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation, nor visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of artificers, to gain the names of wares, tools and operations, of which no mention is found in books; what favourable accident or easy inquiry brought within my reach, has not been neglected; but had been a hopeless labour to glean up words, by courting living information, and contesting with the sullenness of one, and the rough-preserved their words and phrases from mutaness of another.

To furnish the Academicians della Crusca with words of this kind, a series of comedies called La Fiera, or the Fair, was professedly written by Buonaroti; but I had no such assistant, and therefore was content to want what they must have wanted likewise, had they not luckily been so supplied.

Nor are all words which are not found in the vocabulary, to be lamented as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preservation.

fess that I flattered myself for awhile; but now begin to fear that I have indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify. When we seen men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has bility, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.

With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. The French language has visibly changed under the inspection of the Academy; the style of Amelot's translation of Father Paul, is observed by Le Courayer to be un peu passe; and no Italian will maintain, that the diction of any modern writer is not perceptibly different from that of Boccace, Machiavel, or Caro.

Total and sudden transformations of a lanCare will sometimes betray to the appearance guage seldom happen; conquests and migrations of negligence. He that is catching opportunities are now very rare; but there are other causes which seldom occur, will suffer those to pass by of change, which, though slow in their operation, unregarded, which he expects hourly to return; and invisible in their progress, are perhaps as he that is searching for rare and remote things, much superior to human resistance, as the revowill neglect those that are obvious and familiar:lutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. thus many of the most common and cursory Commerce, however necessary, however lucrawords have been inserted with little illustration, tive, as it depraves the manners, corrupts the because in gathering the authorities, I forbore to language; they that have frequent intercourse copy those which I thought likely to occur when-with strangers, to whom they endeavour to acever they were wanted. It is remarkable that, in reviewing my collection, I found the word sea unexemplified.

commodate themselves, must in time learn a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This will not always be confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but will be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people, and be at last incorporated with the current speech.

Thus it happens, that in things difficult there is danger from ignorance, and in things easy, from confidence; the mind, afraid of greatness, and disdainful of littleness, hastily withdraws herself from painful searches, and passes with scornful rapidity over tasks not adequate to her There are likewise internal causes equally powers, sometimes too secure for caution, and forcible. The language most likely to continue again too anxious for vigorous effort; sometimes long without alteration, would be that of a nation idle in a plain path, and sometimes distracted in raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, labyrinths, and dissipated by different intentions. secluded from strangers, and totally employed in A large work is difficult because it is large, procuring the conveniences of life; either witheven though all its parts might singly be per-out books, or, like some of the Mahometan counformed with facility; where there are many tries, with very few: men thus busied and unthings to be done, each must be allowed its share learned, having only such words as common use of time and labour, in the proportion only which requires, would perhaps long continue to express it bears to the whole; nor can it be expected, the same notions by the same signs. But no that the stones which form the dome of a temple, should be squared and polished like the diamond | of a ring.

such constancy can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained Of the event of this work, for which, having and accommodated by the labour of the other. laboured it with so much application, I cannot Those who have much leisure to think, will but have some degree of parental fondness, it is always be enlarging the stock of ideas; and natural to form conjectures. Those who have every increase of knowledge, whether real or been persuaded to think well of my design, will fancied, will produce new words, or combination require that it should fix our language, and put of words. When the mind is unchanged from a stop to those alterations which time and chance necessity, it will range after convenience; when have hitherto been suffered to make in it without it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it opposition. With this consequence I will con- I will shift opinions; as any custom is disused,

the words that expressed it must perish with it: | in the other insurmountable distresses of huas any opinion grows popular, it will innovate manity? It remains that we retard what we speech in the same proportion as it alters practice. cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot As by the cultivation of various sciences a cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though language is amplified, it will be more furnished death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, with words deflected from their original sense; like governments, have a natural tendency to the geometrician will talk of a courtier's zenith, degeneration; we have long preserved our conor the eccentric virtue of a wild hero, and the stitution, let us make some struggles for our physician of sanguine expectations and phleg- language. matic delays. Copiousness of speech will give opportunities to capricious choice, by which some words will be preferred, and others degraded; vicissitudes of fashion will enforce the use of new, or extend the signification of known terms. The tropes of poetry will make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will become the current sense; pronunciation will be varied by levity or ignorance, and the pen must at length comply with the tongue; illiterate writers will, at one time or other, by public infatuation, rise into renown, who not knowing the original import of words, will use them with colloquial licentiousness, confound distinction, and forget propriety. As politeness increases, some expressions will be considered as too gross and vulgar for the delicate, others as too formal and ceremonious for the gay and airy; new phrases are therefore adopted, which must, for the same reasons, be in time dismissed. Swift, in his petty treatise on the English language, allows that new words When I am animated by this wish, I look must sometimes be introduced, but proposes that with pleasure on my book, however defective, none should be suffered to become obsolete. But and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a what makes a word obsolete, more than general man that has endeavoured well. That it will agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be con- immediately become popular, I have not protinued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or re-mised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risicalled again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing by unfamiliarity?

There is another cause of alteration more prevalent than any other, which yet in the present state of the world cannot be obviated. A mixture of two languages will produce a third distinct from both, and they will always be mixed, where the chief parts of education, and the most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient or in foreign tongues. He that has long cultivated another language, will find its words and combinations crowd upon his memory; and haste and negligence, refinement and affectation, will obtrude borrowed terms and exotic expressions.

In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the continent. The chief glory of every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add any thing by my own writings to the reputation of English literature, must be left to time: much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations and distant ages gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle.

ble absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance into contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never can be wanting some who distinguish desert; who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient: that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness The great pest of speech is frequency of trans-under a task, which Scaliger compares to the lation. No book was ever turned from one language into another, without imparting something of its native idiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and the fabric of the tongue continue the same; but new phraseology changes much at once; it alters not the single stones of the building, but the order of the columns. If an academy should be established for the cultivation of our style; which I, who can never wish to see dependence multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries, endeavour, with all their influence, to stop the license of translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble the dialect of France.

If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as

labours of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrrow.

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 proceed 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 obscuri

plaining terms of science, or words of infrequent occurrence, or remote derivation.

ties of retirement, or under the shelter of acade- | of such as aspire to exactness of criticism, or mic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and dis- elegance of style. traction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may But it has been since considered that works repress the triumph of malignant criticism to of that kind are by no means necessary to the observe, that if our language is not here fully greater number of readers, who, seldom intenddisplayed, I have only failed in an attempt which ing to write or presuming to judge, turn over no human powers have hitherto completed. If books only to amuse their leisure, and to gain the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably degrees of knowledge suitable to lower characfixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, ters, or necessary to the common business of after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and life: these know not any other use of a dictiondelusive; if the aggregated knowledge and co-ary than that of adjusting orthography, and exoperating diligence of the Italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? 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 it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE FOURTH EDITION OF THE ENGLISH
DICTIONARY.

MANY are the works of human industry, which to begin and finish are hardly granted to the same man. He that undertakes to compile a dictionary, undertakes that, which, if it comprehends the full extent of his design, he knows himself unable to perform. Yet his labours, though deficient, may be useful, and with the hope of this inferior praise, he must incite his activity, and solace his weariness.

Perfection is unattainable, but nearer and nearer approaches may be made; and finding my dictionary about to be reprinted, I have endeavoured, by a revisal, to make it less reprehensible. I will not deny that I found many parts requiring emendation, and many more capable of improvement. Many faults I have corrected, some superfluities I have taken away, and some deficiencies I have supplied. I have methodised some parts that were disordered, and illuminated some that were obscure. Yet the changes or additions bear a very small proportion to the whole. The critic will now have less to object, but the student who has bought any of the former copies needs not repent; he will not, without nice collation, perceive how they differ; and usefulness seldom depends upon little things.

For negligence or deficience, I have perhaps not need of more apology than the nature of the work will furnish: I have left that inaccurate which never was made exact, and that imperfect which never was completed.

PREFACE

TO THE OCTAVO EDITION OF THE ENGLISH
DICTIONARY.

HAVING been long employed in the study and cultivation of the English language, I lately published a Dictionary like those compiled by the academies of Italy and France, for the use

For these purposes many dictionaries have been written by different authors, and with different degrees of skill; but none of them have yet fallen into my hands by which even the lowest expectations could be satisfied. Some of their authors wanted industry, and others literature; some knew not their own defects, and others were too idle to supply them.

For this reason a small dictionary appeared yet to be wanting to common readers; and, as I may without arrogance claim to myself a longer acquaintance with the lexicography of our language than any other writer has had, I shall hope to be considered as having more experience at least than most of my predecessors, and as more likely to accommodate the nation with a vocabulary of daily use. I therefore offer to the public an Abstract or Epitome of my former

Work.

the same kind, it will be found to have several In comparing this with other dictionaries of advantages.

I. It contains many words not to be found in any other.

II. Many barbarous terms and phrases by which other dictionaries may vitiate the style, are rejected from this.

III. The words are more correctly spelled, partly by attention to their etymology, and partly by observation of the practice of the best authors.

ther from foreign languages or from native roots, IV. The etymologies and derivations, wheare more diligently traced, and more distinctly noted.

ously enumerated, and more clearly explained. V. The senses of each word are more copi

thors, such as Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, VI. Many words occurring in the elder auwhich had been hitherto omitted, are here carefully inserted; so that this book may serve as a glossary or expository index to the poetical

writers.

VII. To the words, and to the different senses

of each word, are subjoined from the large dictionary the names of those writers by whom they have been used; so that the reader who knows the different periods of the language, and the time of its authors, may judge of the elegance or prevalence of any word, or meaning of a word; and without recurring to other books, may know what are antiquated, what are unusual, and what are recommended by the best authority.

The words of this Dictionary, as opposed to others, are more diligently collected, more accurately spelled, more faithfully explained, and more authentically ascertained. Of an Abstract it is not necessary to say more; and I hope it will not be found that truth requires me to say less.

MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

TRAGEDY OF MACBETH:

WITH REMARKS ON SIR T. HANMER'S EDITION OF SHAKSPEARE.

FIRST PRINTED IN THE YEAR 1745.

NOTE I.

out soldiers, was, at the instance of the Empress Placidia, put to death, when he was about to showed some kindness in her anger by cutting have given proofs of his abilities. The empress him off at a time so convenient for his reputation.

ACT I. SCENE I.-Enter three Witches. In order to make a true estimate of the abilities and merit of a writer, it is always necessary to examine the genius of his age, and the opinions of his contemporaries. A poet who should now make the whole action of his tragedy de- of this notion may be found in St. Chrysostom's But a more remarkable proof of the antiquity pend upon enchantment, and produce the chief book de Sacerdotio, which exhibits a scene of enevents by the assistance of supernatural agents, chantments not exceeded by any romance of the would be censured as transgressing the bounds middle age; he supposes a spectator, overlook. of probability, he would be banished from the ing a field of battle, attended by one that points theatre to the nursery, and condemned to write out all the various objects of horror, the engines Fairy Tales instead of Tragedies; but a survey of destruction, and the arts of slaughter. Aa of the notions that prevailed at the time when | κνύτο δὲ ἔτι παρὰ τοῖς ἐναντίοις καὶ πετομένους ἵππους this play was written, will prove that Shak- διά τινος μαγγανείας, καὶ ὁπλίτας δι' ἀέρος φερομένους, speare was in no danger of such censures, since καὶ πάσην γοητείας δύναμιν καὶ ἰδέαν. Let him then he only turned the system that was then uni-proceed to show him in the opposite armies horses versally admitted to his advantage, and was far from overburdening the credulity of his audience.

flying by enchantment, armed men transported through the air, and every power and form of maperformances were really to be seen in a day of gic. Whether St. Chrysostom believed that such battle, or only endeavoured to enliven his description, by adopting the notions of the vulgar, it is equally certain, that such notions were in his time received, and that therefore they were not imported from the Saracens in a later age; the wars with the Saracens, however, gave occasion to their propagation, not only as bigotry naturally discovers prodigies, but as the scene of action was removed to a greater distance, and distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.

The reality of witchcraft or enchantment, which though not strictly the same, are confounded in this play, has in all ages and countries been credited by the common people, and in most by the learned themselves. These phantoms have indeed appeared more frequently, in proportion as the darkness of ignorance has been more gross; but it cannot be shown, that the brightest gleams of knowledge have at any time been sufficient to drive them out of the world. The time in which this kind of credulity was at its height, seems to have been that of the holy war, in which the Christians imputed all their defeats to enchantment or diabolical oppo- at its meridian, and though day was gradually The reformation did not immediately arrive sition, as they ascribe their success to the assis-increasing upon us, the goblins of witchcraft tance of their military saints; and the learned Mr. Warburton appears to believe ("Sup. to the Introduction to Don Quixote") that the first accounts of enchantments were brought into this part of the world by those who returned from their eastern expeditions. But there is always some distance between the birth and maturity of folly as of wickedness: this opinion had long existed, though perhaps the application of it had in no foregoing age been so frequent, nor the reception so general. Olympiodorus, in Photius's Extracts, tells us of one Libanius, who practised this kind of military magic, and having promised χώρις ὁπλιτῶν κατὰ Βαρβαρων ἐνεργεῖν, to perform great things against the Barbarians, with

still continued to hover in the twilight. In the time of Queen Elizabeth was the remarkable trial of the witches of Warbois, whose conviction is still commemorated in an annual sermon at Huntingdon. But in the reign of King James, in which this tragedy was written, many circumstances concurred to propagate and confirm this opinion. The king who was much celebrated for his knowledge, had, before his arrival in England, not only examined in person a woman accused of witchcraft, but had given a very formal account of the practices and illusions of evil spirits, the compacts of witches, the cere monies used by them, the manner of detecting them, and the justice of punishing them, in his

dialogues of Dæmonologie, written in the Scot- he had a just quarrel to endeavour after the tish dialect, and published at Edinburgh. This crown. The sense therefore is, fortune smiling book was, soon after his accession, reprinted at in his execrable cause, &c.

NOTE III.

If I say sooth, I must report they were As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks, So they redoubled strokes upon the foe. Mr. Theobald has endeavoured to improve the sense of this passage by altering the punctuation thus :

-They were
As cannons overcharg'd, with double cracks
So they redoubled strokes-

London; and as the ready way to gain King James's favour was to flatter his speculations, the system of Dæmonologie was immediately adopted by all who desired either to gain preferment or not to lose it. Thus the doctrine of witchcraft was very powerfully inculcated; and as the greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion, it cannot be doubted but this persuasion made a rapid progress, since vanity and credulity co-operated in its favour, and it had a tendency to free cowardice from reproach. The He declares with some degree of exultation, infection soon reached the parliament, who, in that he has no idea of a cannon charged with the first year of King James, made a law, by double cracks; but surely the great author will which it was enacted, ch. xii. that, "If any not gain much by an alteration which makes person shall use any invocation or conjuration him say of a hero, that he redoubles strokes with of any evil or wicked spirit; 2. Or shall consult, double cracks, an expression not more loudly to covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward be applauded, or more easily pardoned, than that any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or which is rejected in its favour. That a cannon is purpose; 3. Or take up any dead man, woman, charged with thunder or with double thunders, may or child out of the grave,—or the skin, bone, or be written not only without nonsense, but with any part of the dead person, to be employed or elegance; and nothing else is here meant by used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, cracks, which in the time of this writer was a charm, or enchantment; 4. Or shall use, prac-word of such emphasis and dignity, that in this tise, or exercise any sort of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; 5. Whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in any part of the body; 6. That every such person, being convicted, shall suffer death."

Thus, in the time of Shakspeare, was the doctrine of witchcraft at once established by law and by the fashion, and it became not only unpolite, but criminal, to doubt it; and as prodigies are always seen in proportion as they are expected, witches were every day discovered, and multiplied so fast in some places, that Bishop Hall mentions a village in Lancashire, where their number was greater than that of the houses. The Jesuits and Sectaries took advantage of this universal error, and endeavoured to promote the interest of their parties by pretended cures of persons afflicted by evil spirits, but they were detected and exposed by the clergy of the esta

blished church.

Upon this general infatuation Shakspeare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially since he has followed with great exactness such histories as were then thought true; nor can it be doubted that the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting,

NOTE II.-SCENE II.

-The merciless Macdonel,- from the Western Isles
Of Kerns and Gallow-glasses was supply'd;
And fortune on his damned quarry smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's whore.

Kerns are light-armed, and Gallow-glasses heavy-armed soldiers. The word quarry has no sense that is properly applicable in this place, and therefore it is necessary to read,

And fortune on his damned quarrel smiling. Quarrel was formerly used for cause or for the occasion of a quarrel, and is to be found in that sense in Hollingshead's account of the story of Macbeth, who, upon the creation of the Prince of Cumberland, thought, says the historian, that

play he terms the general dissolution of nature the crack of doom.

There are among Mr. Theobald's alterations others which I do not approve, though I do not always censure them; for some of his amendments are so excellent, that, even when he has failed, he ought to be treated with indulgence and respect.

NOTE IV.

King. But who comes here?
Mal. The worthy Thane of Rosse.
Lenor. What haste looks through his eyes?
So should he look that seems to speak things strange.

The meaning of this passage as it now stands is, so should he look, that looks as if he told things strange. But Rosse neither yet told strange things, nor could look as if he told them Lenox only conjectured from his air that he had strange things to tell, and therefore undoubtedly said,

-What haste looks through his eyes?

So should he look, that teems to speak things strange. He looks like one that is big with something of importance, a metaphor so natural, that it is every day used in common discourse.

NOTE V.-SCENE III.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches.

1st Witch. Where hast thou been, sister?
2d Witch. Killing swine.

3d Witch. Sister, where thou?

1st Witch. A sailor's wife had chesnuts in her lap, And mouncht, and mouncht, and mouncht. Give me,

quoth I.

(1) Aroint thee, witch, the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' th' Tiger.
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
And like a rat without a tail,
I'll do I'll do and I'll do.

2d Witch. I'll give thee wind.
1st Witch. Thou art kind.
3d Witch. And I another.

1st Witch. I myself have all the other,

And the (2) very points they blow,

All the quarters that they know,

I' th' Ship-man's card

I will drain him dry as hay

Sleep shall neither night nor day