senses in which many words were used was the original, or how or when
these many senses had been developed; nor, in the case of words
described as _obsolete_, were we told _when_ they became obsolete or
by whom they were last used. He pointed out also that the obsolete and
the rarer words of the language had never been completely collected;
that thousands of words current in the literature of the past three
centuries had escaped the diligence of Johnson and all his
supplementers; that, indeed, the collection of the requisite material
for a complete dictionary could not be compassed by any one man,
however long-lived and however diligent, but must be the work of many
collaborators who would undertake systematically to read and to
extract English literature. He called upon the Philological Society,
therefore, as the only body in England then interesting itself in the
language, to undertake the collection of materials to complete the
work already done by Bailey, Johnson, Todd, Webster, Richardson, and
others, and to prepare a supplement to all the dictionaries, which
should register all omitted words and senses, and supply all the
historical information in which these works were lacking, and, above
all, should give quotations illustrating the first and last
appearance, and every notable point in the life-history of every word.

From this impulse arose the movement which, widened and directed by
much practical experience, has culminated in the preparation of the
Oxford English Dictionary, 'A new English Dictionary on Historical
Principles, founded mainly on the materials collected by the
Philological Society.' This dictionary superadds to all the features
that have been successively evolved by the long chain of workers, the
historical information which Dr. Trench desiderated. It seeks not
merely to record every word that has been used in the language for the
last 800 years, with its written form and signification, and the