Had the project for such a combination in Queen Anne's reign been
carried into execution, the result might have been fewer defects and
less excellence: the explanation of technical terms would probably have
been more exact, the derivations more copious, and a greater number of
significant words now omitted [7], have been collected from our earliest
writers; but the citations would often have been made with less
judgment, and the definitions laid down with less acuteness of
discrimination.

From his new patron, whom he courted without the aid of those graces so
devoutly worshipped by that nobleman, he reaped but small advantage;
and, being much exasperated at his neglect, Johnson addressed to him a
very cutting, but, it must be owned, an intemperate letter, renouncing
his protection, though, when the Dictionary was completed, Chesterfield
had ushered its appearance before the public in two complimentary papers
in the World; but the homage of the client was not to be recalled, or
even his resentment to be appeased. His great work is thus spoken of at
its first appearance, in a letter from Thomas Warton to his brother [8].
"The Dictionary is arrived; the preface is noble. There is a grammar
prefixed, and the history of the language is pretty full; but you may
plainly perceive strokes of laxity and indolence. They are two most
unwieldy volumes. I have written to him an invitation. I fear his
preface will disgust, by the expressions of his consciousness of
superiority, and of his contempt of patronage." In 1773, when he gave a
second edition, with additions and corrections, he announced in a few
prefatory lines that he had expunged some superfluities, and corrected
some faults, and here and there had scattered a remark; but that the
main fabric continued the same. "I have looked into it," he observes, in
a letter to Boswell, "very little since I wrote it, and, I think, I
found it full as often better as worse than I expected."