higher level. In his hands it became a department of literature. The
value of the Dictionary was recognized from the first by men of
letters; a second edition was called for the same year. But it hardly
became a popular work, or even a work of popular fame, before the
present century. For forty years after its first publication editions
of Bailey followed each other as rapidly as ever; numerous new
dictionaries of the size and character of Bailey, often largely
indebted to Johnson's definitions, appeared. But the only new feature
introduced into lexicography between 1755 and the end of the century
was the indication of the Orthoepy or Pronunciation. From Bailey
onward, and by Johnson himself, the place of the stress-accent had
been marked, but no attempt had been made to show how such a group of
letters, for example, as _colonel_, or _enough_, or _phthisical_, was
actually pronounced; or, to use modern phraseology, to tell what the
_living word_ itself was, as distinguished from its written symbol.
This feature, so obviously important in a language of which the
spelling had ceased to be phonetic, was added by Dr. William Kenrick
in his 'New Dictionary' of 1773, a little later in 1775 by William
Perry, in 1780 by Thomas Sheridan, and especially in 1791 by John
Walker, whose authority long remained as supreme in the domain of
pronunciation, as that of Dr. Johnson in definition and illustration;
so that popular dictionaries of the first half of the present century
commonly claimed to be abridgements of 'Johnson's Dictionary, with,
the Pronunciation on the basis of Walker.'

From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the lexicographical
supremacy of Johnson's Dictionary was undisputed, and eminent students
of the language busied themselves in trying, not to supersede it, but
to supplement and perfect it. Numerous supplements, containing
additional words, senses, and quotations, were published; in 1818 a