replied "like the monument," and indeed he made it a principle
throughout life to accept the decision of the public like a sensible man
without murmurs.

Meanwhile, Johnson was already embarked upon an undertaking of a very
different kind. In 1747 he had put forth a plan for an English
Dictionary, addressed at the suggestion of Dodsley, to Lord
Chesterfield, then Secretary of State, and the great contemporary
Maecenas. Johnson had apparently been maturing the scheme for some
time. "I know," he says in the "plan," that "the work in which I engaged
is generally considered as drudgery for the blind, as the proper toil of
artless industry, a book that requires neither the light of learning nor
the activity of genius, but may be successfully performed without any
higher quality than that of bearing burdens with dull patience, and
beating the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution." He adds in
a sub-sarcastic tone, that although princes and statesmen had once
thought it honourable to patronize dictionaries, he had considered such
benevolent acts to be "prodigies, recorded rather to raise wonder than
expectation," and he was accordingly pleased and surprised to find that
Chesterfield took an interest in his undertaking. He proceeds to lay
down the general principles upon which he intends to frame his work, in
order to invite timely suggestions and repress unreasonable
expectations. At this time, humble as his aspirations might be, he took
a view of the possibilities open to him which had to be lowered before
the publication of the dictionary. He shared the illusion that a
language might be "fixed" by making a catalogue of its words. In the
preface which appeared with the completed work, he explains very
sensibly the vanity of any such expectation. Whilst all human affairs
are changing, it is, as he says, absurd to imagine that the language
which repeats all human thoughts and feelings can remain unaltered.