second-or third-hand, and, therefore, to be accepted with
qualification[15]. The quotations in the New English Dictionary, on
the other hand, have been supplied afresh by its army of volunteer
Readers; or, when for any reason one is adopted from a preceding
dictionary without verification, the fact is stated, both as an
acknowledgement of others' work, and as a warning to the reader that
it is given on intermediate authority.

Original work, patient induction of facts, minute verification of
evidence, are slow processes, and a work so characterized cannot be
put together with scissors and paste, or run off with the speed of the
copyist. All the great dictionaries of the modern languages have taken
a long time to make; but the speed with which the New English
Dictionary has now advanced nearly to its half-way point can
advantageously claim comparison with the progress of any other great
dictionary, even when this falls far behind in historical and
inductive character.[16] Be the speed what it may, however, there is
the consideration that the work thus done is done once for all; the
structure now reared will have to be added to, continued, and extended
with time, but it will remain, it is believed, the great body of fact
on which all future work will be built. It is never possible to
forecast the needs and notions of those who shall come after us; but
with our present knowledge it is not easy to conceive what new feature
can now be added to English Lexicography. At any rate, it can be
maintained that in the Oxford Dictionary, permeated as it is through
and through with the scientific method of the century, Lexicography
has for the present reached its supreme development.

In the course of this lecture, it has been needful to give so many
details as to individual works, that my audience may at times have