exactness in exhibiting the current uses of words, and especially of the many modern words which the progress of physical science has called into being. But they leave the history of the words themselves where it was when Dr. Trench pointed out the deficiencies of existing dictionaries. And their literary illustrations of the older words are, in too many cases, those of Dr. Johnson, copied from dictionary to dictionary without examination or verification, and, what is more important, without acknowledgement, so that the reader has no warning that a given quotation is merely second- or third-hand, and, therefore, to be accepted with qualification[1]. The quotations in the New English Dictionary, on the other hand, have been supplied afresh by its army of volunteer Readers; or, when for any reason one is adopted from a preceding dictionary without verification, the fact is stated, both as an acknowledgement of others' work, and as a warning to the reader that it is given on intermediate authority.
Original work, patient induction of facts, minute verification of evidence, are slow processes, and a work so characterized cannot be put together with scissors and paste, or run off with the speed of the copyist. All the great dictionaries of the modern languages have taken a long time to make; but the speed with which
- ↑ In some cases, long Lists of the Authors, from whose works 'the illustrative quotations have been selected,' are given, without the statement that many of those quotations have not actually been selected from the authors and works named, but have merely been annexed from Johnson or one of his supplemented.
