THE WORKS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, L. L. D. A NEW EDITION. IN TWELVE VOLUMES. WITH AN ESSAY ON HIS LIFE AND GENIUS, BY ARTHUR MURPHY, ESQ. FOR LIBR ARY NEW-YORK VOL. II. Boston : PUBLISHED BY HASTINGS, ETHERIDGE AND BLISS. STATE STREET. *****... General Observations on Shakspeare's plays Account of the Harleian Library Essay on the Origin and Importance of Fugitive Pieces Account of the Life of Benvenuto Cellini View of the Controversy between Crousaz and Warburton Preface to Rolt's Dictionary · 303 THE PLAN OF AN ENGLISH DICTIONARY. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE PHILIP DORMER, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD, ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRE TARIES OF STATE. MY LORD, WHEN first I undertook to write an English Dictionary, I had no expectation of any higher patronage than that of the proprietors of the copy, nor prospect of any other advantage than the price of my labour. I knew that the work in which I engaged is generally considered as drudgery for the blind, as the proper toil of artless industry; a task that requires neither the light of learning, nor the activity of genius, but may be successfully performed without any higher quality than that of bearing burthens with dull patience, and beating the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution. Whether this opinion, so long transmitted, and so widely propagated, had its beginning from truth and nature, or from accident and prejudice; whether it be decreed by the authority of reason, or the tyranny of ignorance, that of all the candidates for literary praise, the I VOL. II. |