On pulpit censure




THE PLAN
OF AN
ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
PHILIP DORMER, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD,
One of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State.


MY LORD,

When first I undertook to write an English Dictionary, I had no
expectation of any higher patronage than that of the proprietors of the
copy, nor prospect of any other advantage than the price of my labour. I
knew that the work in which I engaged is generally considered as
drudgery for the blind, as the proper toil of artless industry; a task
that requires neither the light of learning, nor the activity of genius,
but maybe successfully performed without any higher quality than that of
bearing burdens with dull patience, and beating the track of the
alphabet with sluggish resolution.

Whether this opinion, so long transmitted, and so widely propagated, had
its beginning from truth and nature, or from accident and prejudice;
whether it be decreed by the authority of reason or the tyranny of