Now I have nothing at all against dictionaries. I find them entertaining reading, pithy, diversified, pleasantly alliterative, well informed but never tedious. Indeed, appreciation of the dictionary is growing steadily. Its influence on the arts is strong and increasing. In literature, as far back as E. F. Benson’s _Dodo_ it could be faintly discerned, while to-day it shines unmistakably in such books as Compton Mackenzie’s _Sylvia Scarlett_ or in any novel by Stephen McKenna. As for the movies, they are fairly suffused with the spirit of the dictionary. For example, a two-dimensioned heroine is going to make a visit. You see her enter her motor car, ride in her motor car, descend from her motor car. From what does such bright thoroughness derive if not from the thoroughness and inevitable logic of the dictionary? Predictable; prediction; predictive(ly). Nevertheless, the dictionary is imperfect. For it defines only the literal meaning of a word, which is less than half its significance. All valuable words grow hazy with connotation, and this luminous haze becomes a true part of their meaning. What sort of definition is ‘sprite or goblin of Arabian tales’ for ‘genie’? In fact, there are a number of words that to a great many people mean nothing _but_ their connotation, the haze that has risen around them; ‘Bolshevism,’ for instance. This emanation or glow or haze about words infinitely enriches language; it makes poetry possible. But one does not always want to use language emotionally; often one desires merely to express accurately a prosaic thought. Then the richness clogs one. It is as though a commercial traveller in olive oil, setting out to go from Naples to Smyrna, were to find himself not traversing the eastern Mediterranean, but adrift on the confused enchanted sea of Odysseus. Mediaeval saints frequently had visions of the Madonna that rendered them ecstatic with joy. But the celestial light that shone from her face was so dazzling that they were seldom able to give any satisfactory account of her features.