��Anecdotes.
��set his desk in order, and betake himself to serious study ; but a retentive memory will do something, and a fellow shall have strange credit given him, if he can but recollect striking passages from different books, keep the authors separate in his head, and bring his stock of knowledge artfully into play * : How else (added he) do the gamesters 2 manage when they play for more money than they are worth?' His Dictionary, however, could not, one would think, have been written by running up and down ; but he really did not consider it as a great performance ; and used to say, ' that he might have done it easily in two years, had not his health received several shocks during the time V
When Mr. Thrale, in consequence of this declaration, teized him in the year 1 768 to give a new edition of it, because (said he) there are four or five gross faults 4 : 'Alas, Sir (replied
��world," as he expressed it, more almost than any body.' Life, i. 215. A writer in the Monthly Review, N. S. xx. p. 21, who had known Johnson, says : ' He always pre ferred conversation to reading, though it were with the lowest mechanics ; and he constantly listened to pro fessional men with respect. His dis putes were chiefly with those pre tenders to that knowledge and science of which he was himself at least equally qualified to judge.' Quoted in Anderson's Johnson, ed. 1815, p.
475-
1 It was by this method that at Fort George he talked with the officers of granulating gunpowder,
- and made a very good figure upon
these topicks.' Life, v. 124.
2 Gamester has been long sup planted by gambler, under which word Johnson writes in his Dictionary, ' a cant word (I suppose) for game and gamester!
3 He told Dr. Adams that he ex pected to do it in three years. Ib. i. 1 86. He took seven or eight. We
��have no account of his ill-health during that time. His wife's long illness and death came in the midst, and so too did all his Ramblers.
4 In the Scots Magazine for 1761, p. 693, is a short list of words with the following heading : * A Scotch gentleman caused a friend wait of [sic] Mr. Johnson with a list of words suspected to be wrong accented in his dictionary ; and was favoured with the following corrections marked by Mr. Johnson's own hand.' The errors seem to have been most, if not all, those of the printer.
When Reynolds asked him why he had not in his second edition corrected a certain error, he replied, ' No, they made so much of it that I would not flatter them by altering it.' Life, i. 293, n. 2. In the Abridge ment which he made himself the erroneous definition of pastern re mains, and leeward and windward are still both defined as towards the wind. In Murray's Johnsoniana, 1836, p. 467, an error in a reference is pointed out which has not been Johnson
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