It is seldom that so much rugged energy can be so blandly attempered, that so much vehemence and so much softness will go together." Dr. Johnson's "Dictionary" is one of the most familiar books in the English language, and the particulars of the way in which it was compiled are of considerable interest. He agreed with a number of leading London booksellers to prepare the work for £1,775, and spent seven years over the task. When he undertook it, he expected to finish it in three years. His friend, Dr. Adams, called upon him one day, and found him busy with his book, and, says Boswell, a dialogue as follows ensued. "Adams: 'This is a great work, sir. How are you to get all the etymologies?' Johnson: 'Why, here is a shelf with Junius and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welsh gentleman who has published a collection of Welsh proverbs, who will help me with the Welsh.' Adams: 'But, sir, how can you do this in three years?' Johnson: 'Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years.' Adams: 'But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to complete their dictionary.' Johnson: 'Sir, thus it is--this is the proportion. Let me see: forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.'" This pleasantry is not reproduced to show Johnson's vanity, but to give a glimpse of some of the books he used, and his own ideas as to the period he expected to spend over the undertaking. Johnson fitted up an upper room like a counting house, in which were employed six copyists; and in spite of his asserted aversion from Scotchmen, he engaged no less than five of them on his book, so that his objection to the sons of Caledonia cannot have been very deeply rooted. Many of his words were drawn from previously published dictionaries, and others he supplied himself. He spent much time in reading the best informed authors, and marked their books with a pencil when he found suitable material for his work. He would not under any consideration quote the productions of an author whose writings were calculated to hurt sound religion and morality. The marked sentences were copied on slips of paper, which were afterwards posted into an interleaved copy of an old dictionary opposite the words to which they related. At the commencement of the work he made a rather serious mistake by writing on both sides of his paper. He had to pay twenty pounds to have it transcribed to one side of the paper only.