in his Letters edited by Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill[1]. It was also the spelling of all the writers whom Johnson quoted. But by some inexplicable error, the word got into the dictionary as despatch, and this spelling was even substituted in most of the quotations. I have not found that a single writer followed this erroneous spelling in the eighteenth century: Nelson, Wellesley, Wellington, and all our commanders and diplomatists wrote Dispatches; but since about 1820, the filtering down of the influence of Johnson's Dictionary has caused this erroneous spelling despatch to become generally known and to be looked upon as authoritative; so that at the present time about half our newspapers give the erroneous form, to which, more lamentably, the Post Office, after long retaining the correct official tradition, recently capitulated.
But despite small blemishes[2], the dictionary was a marvellous piece of work to accomplish in eight and a half years; and it is quite certain that, if all the quotations had had to be verified and furnished with
- ↑ The following are examples of his own practice: The Rambler (1751), No. 153, par. 3, 'I was in my eighteenth year dispatched to the university.' Ibid., No. 161, par. 4, 'I . . . soon dispatched a bargain on the usual terms.' Letter to Mrs. Thrale, May 6, 1776, 'We dispatched our journey very peaceably.'
- ↑ Among such must be reckoned the treatment of words in the explanation of which Johnson showed political or personal animus or whimsical humour, as in the well-known cases of whig, tory, excise, pension, pensioner, oats, Grub-street, lexicographer (see Boswell's Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, i. 294); although it must be admitted that these have come to be among the famous spots of the Dictionary, and have given gentle amusement to thousands, to whom it has been a delight to see 'human nature' too strong for lexicographic decorum.
