Boswell is the same. He does not say "many times in his later life" but "upon innumerable occasions in his subsequent life." Or look back at page 24, where he finds it "melancholy to reflect that Johnson and Savage were in such extreme indigence." Why couldn't he have found it "sad to think that they were so poor"? Long words were the fashion of the time and to do Johnson justice, we must try to put ourselves back in his century. Nowadays, we have no trouble in finding dictionaries, whether we want an exhaustive work of reference or a handy volume for the pocket. But in Johnson's day it was different. Such dictionaries as had previously appeared were vocabularies of "hard words" only, not of words in general. The only attempt to produce a dictionary containing _all_ English words was that compiled in 1721 by one Nathaniel Bailey, but it contained very little illustration of the use of words. There was, in fact, no dictionary which attempted either to _fix_ the language or to illustrate the different meanings of a word by quotations from English writers. Johnson began to consider whether he might not produce one himself. "The year 1747" says Boswell "is distinguished as the epoch, when Johnson's arduous and important work, his DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, was announced to the world, by the publication of its Plan or _Prospectus_. How long this immense undertaking had been the object of his contemplation, I do not know. I once asked him by what means he had attained to that astonishing knowledge of our language, by which he was enabled to realise a design of such extent, and accumulated difficulty. He told me, that 'it was not the effect of particular study; but that it had grown up in his mind insensibly.'" Even Johnson had had some doubts at the beginning: "I have been informed by Mr James Dodsley, that several years before this period, when Johnson was one day sitting in his brother Robert's shop, he heard his brother suggest to him, that a Dictionary of the English Language would be a work that would be well received by the publick; that Johnson seemed at first to catch at the proposition, but, after a pause, said, in his abrupt decisive manner, 'I believe I shall not undertake it.'" But he changed his mind. Half-a-dozen booksellers agreed between them to pay the author fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds for the work, and the "Plan" was addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield, "then one of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State; a nobleman who was very ambitious of literary distinction." England has always prided herself on the individual enterprise of her citizens and Johnson "the true-born Englishman" had now undertaken, "single and unaided ... a work which in other countries had not been effected but by the co-operating exertions of many," but "he had a noble consciousness of his own abilities, which enabled him to go on with undaunted spirit."