In this notion of ascertaining, purifying, refining, and fixing the language, England was only following in the wake of some other countries. In Italy the _Accademia della Crusca_, and in France the _Academie française_, had been instituted for this very purpose, and the latter had, after twenty years of preparation, and forty more years of work, published the first edition of a dictionary in which the French language was (fondly and vainly) supposed to be thus ascertained, sifted, and fixed for ever. England had no Academy; but it was thought that what had been done in France by the Forty Immortals might perhaps be done here by some leading man of letters. The idea had, it appears, been put before Alexander Pope, and approved by him; he is said even to have drawn up a list of the authors whose writings might be taken as authorities for such a dictionary; but he died in 1744, before anything further was done. The subject seems then to have been pressed upon the attention of SAMUEL JOHNSON; but it was not till 1747 that the matter took definite shape, when a syndicate of five or six London booksellers contracted with Johnson to produce the desired standard dictionary in the space of three years for the sum of fifteen hundred guineas. Alas for human calculations, and especially for those of dictionary makers! The work occupied nearly thrice the specified time, and, ere it was finished, the stipulated sum had been considerably overdrawn. At length, in 1755, appeared the two massive folios, each 17 inches long, 10 inches wide, and 3-1/2 inches thick, entitled 'A | Dictionary | of the | English Language | in which | the Words are deduced from their Originals, | and | illustrated in their different significations | by Examples from the Best Writers. | By Samuel Johnson.' The limits of this lecture do not permit me to say one tithe of what might and ought to be said of this great work. For the present purpose it must suffice to point out that the special new feature which it contributed to the evolution of the modern dictionary was the illustration of the use of each word by a selection of literary quotations, and the more delicate appreciation and discrimination of senses which this involved and rendered possible. Only where he had no quotations did Johnson insert words from Bailey's folio, or other source, with _Dict._ as the authority. The literary quotations were entirely supplied by himself from his capacious memory, or from books specially perused and marked by him for extraction. When he first began his work in the room in Gough Square, his whole time was devoted to thus reading and marking books, from which six clerkly assistants copied the marked quotations. The fact that many of the quotations were inserted from memory without verification (a practice facilitated by Johnson's plan of merely naming the author, without specifying the particular work quoted, or giving any reference whereby the passage could be turned up) is