noble consciousness of his own abilities, which enabled him to go on with undaunted spirit[1].
Dr. Adams found him one day busy at his Dictionary, when the following dialogue ensued. 'Adams. This is a great work, Sir. How are you to get all the etymologies? Johnson. Why, Sir, here is a shelf with Junius, and Skinner[2], and others; and there is a Welch gentleman who has published a collection of Welch proverbs, who will help me with the Welch[3]. Adams. But, 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.' With so much ease and pleasantry could he talk of that prodigious labour which he had undertaken to execute.
The publick has had, from another pen[4], a long detail of
- ↑ There might be applied to him what he said of Pope:—'Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings. He, indeed, who forms his opinion of himself in solitude without knowing the powers of other men, is very liable to error; but it was the felicity of Pope to rate himself at his real value.' Johnson's Works, viii. 237.
- ↑ 'For the Teutonick etymologies I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner . . . Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning and Skinner in rectitude of understanding . . . Skinner is often ignorant, but never ridiculous: Junius is always full of knowledge, but his variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very frequently disgraced by his absurdities.' Ib. v. 29. Francis Junius the younger was born at Heidelberg in 1589, and died at Windsor, at the house of his nephew Isaac Vossius, in 1678. His Etymolgicum Anglicanum was not published till 1743. Stephen Skinner, M.D., was born in 1623, and died in 1667. His Etymologicon Linguœ Anglicanœ was published in 1671. Knight's Eng. Cyclo.
- ↑ Thomas Richards published in 1753 Antiquœ Linguœ Britannicœ Thesaurus, to which is prefixed a Welsh Grammar and a collection of British proverbs.
- ↑ See Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson [p. 171]. Boswell.
