at the review, what was left incomplete in the first transcription.

Many terms, appropriated to particular occupations, though necessary and
significant, are undoubtedly omitted; and, of the words most studiously
considered and exemplified, many senses have escaped observation.

Yet these failures, however frequent, may admit extenuation and apology.
To have attempted much is always laudable, even when the enterprise is
above the strength that undertakes it: To rest below his own aim is
incident to every one whose fancy is active, and whose views are
comprehensive; nor is any man satisfied with himself, because he has
done much, but because he can conceive little. When first I engaged in
this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and
pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in
feasts of literature, with the obscure recesses of northern learning
which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with which I expected
every search into those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the
triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I
had thus inquired into the original of words, I resolved to show
likewise my attention to things; to pierce deep into every science, to
inquire the nature of every substance of which I inserted the name, to
limit every idea by a definition strictly logical, and exhibit every
production of art or nature in an accurate description, that my book
might be in place of all other dictionaries, whether appellative or
technical. But these were the dreams of a poet, doomed at last to wake a
lexicographer. I soon found that it is too late to look for instruments,
when the work calls for execution, and that whatever abilities I had
brought to my task, with those I must finally perform it. To deliberate
whenever I doubted, to inquire whenever I was ignorant, would have
protracted the undertaking without end, and, perhaps, without much