"Mr Andrew Millar, bookseller in the Strand, took the principal charge of conducting the publication.... When the messenger who carried the last sheet to Millar returned, Johnson asked him 'Well, what did he say?'--'Sir (answered the messenger) he said, Thank GOD I have done with him.' 'I am glad (replied Johnson, with a smile) that he thanks GOD for anything.'" Lord Chesterfield, to whom the "Plan" had been addressed, had taken no notice of Johnson during his years of toil. Johnson had waited in his "outward rooms" and been "repulsed from his door"--an incident which a famous picture has made familiar to many who otherwise, perhaps, would hardly have heard either of the rich nobleman or of the "uncourtly scholar." On the eve of publication, however, Lord Chesterfield attempted to make amends by two complimentary notices in a paper called _The World_. This provoked Johnson to write one of the best known letters in English literature. Here is a part of it: "Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before.... Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Publick should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself." This fine piece of snubbing, written, as Johnson said, in _defensive_ pride, became "the talk of the town." But Johnson did not wish it to be public property. When Lord Hardwicke expressed a wish to read it, he "declined to comply with the request, saying, with a smile 'No, Sir; I have hurt the dog too much already.'" "The _Dictionary_" says Boswell "with a _Grammar and History of the English Language_ being now at length published, in two volumes folio, the world contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work achieved by one man." We, too, may do the same, though we may be frightened, rather than attracted, by the sentence which Boswell selects from the _Preface_ as a model of clearness and choice of words: "When the radical idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their own nature collateral?"