I have sometimes, though rarely, yielded to the temptation of exhibiting
a genealogy of sentiments, by showing how one author copied the thoughts
and diction of another: such quotations are, indeed, little more than
repetitions, which might justly be censured, did they not gratify the
mind, by affording a kind of intellectual history.

The various syntactical structures occurring in the examples have been
carefully noted; the license or negligence, with which many words have
been hitherto used, has made our style capricious and indeterminate;
when the different combinations of the same word are exhibited together,
the preference is readily given to propriety, and I have often
endeavoured to direct the choice.

Thus I have laboured, by settling the orthography, displaying the
analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the signification
of English words, to perform all the parts of a faithful lexicographer:
but I have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own
expectations. The work, whatever proofs of diligence and attention it
may exhibit, is yet capable of many improvements: the orthography which
I recommend is still controvertible; the etymology which I adopt is
uncertain, and, perhaps, frequently erroneous; the explanations are
sometimes too much contracted, and sometimes too much diffused; the
significations are distinguished rather with subtilty than skill, and
the attention is harassed with unnecessary minuteness.

The examples are too often injudiciously truncated, and perhaps
sometimes, I hope very rarely, alleged in a mistaken sense; for in
making this collection I trusted more to memory, than, in a state of
disquiet and embarrassment, memory can contain, and purposed to supply,