Boswell gives us a few glimpses of his hero engaged on this great task: "Dr Adams found him one day busy at his _Dictionary_, when the following dialogue ensued: ADAMS. This is a great work, 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 compile 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." "For the mechanical part he employed, as he told me, six amanuenses; and let it be remembered by the natives of North-Britain, to whom he is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them were of that country.... To all these painful labourers, Johnson shewed a never-ceasing kindness." "While the _Dictionary_ was going forward, Johnson lived part of the time in Holborn, part in Gough-square, Fleet-street; and he had an upper room fitted up like a counting-house for the purpose, in which he gave to the copyists their several tasks. The words, partly taken from other dictionaries, and partly supplied by himself, having been first written down with spaces left between them, he delivered in writing their etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages, with a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could easily be effaced. I have seen several of them, in which that trouble had not been taken, so that they were just as when used by the copyists." [Illustration: JOHNSON'S HOUSE IN GOUGH SQUARE No. 17 Gough Square, the house in which Johnson lived from 1748 to 1759, was bought in 1911 by Mr Cecil Harmsworth, who undertook such restoration as was necessary. The visitor will find it most easily by turning into Bolt Court, on the north side of Fleet Street, and will note with satisfaction that "almost every original feature of importance has survived." A descriptive booklet, with a good coloured portrait, may be bought at the house, and a well-illustrated account is given in _The Architectural Review_ for December, 1918. Carlyle's description of his visit (_Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. IV_) is well known and the reader may also be referred to Mr Austin Dobson's _A Garret in Gough Square (Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 1st Series_) and Miss Sophie Cole's novel, _A London Posy_.] Though these pencil-marks do not remain for us to see, the house in Gough Square still stands. The literary adventurer of to-day may behold it with something of that reverence which St John's Gate inspired in Johnson when he first came to London. The Dictionary employed Johnson for eight years.