the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task, which Scaliger
compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious
is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that
sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations
will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken
learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory, at
the moment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive
readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow.

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be
forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever
spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little
solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it
condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English
Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and
without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of
retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst
inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress
the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our language is
not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt, which no
human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient
tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet,
after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the
aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian
academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the
embodied criticks of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their
work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition
another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of
perfection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what
would it avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those, whom I