that every learner of English may be assisted by his own tongue.

The solution of all difficulties, and the supply of all defects,
must be sought in the examples, subjoined to the various senses of
each word, and ranged according to the time of their authours.

When first I collected these authorities, I was desirous that every
quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration
of a word; I therefore extracted from philosophers principles of
science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete
processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful
descriptions. Such is design, while it is yet at a distance from
execution. When the time called upon me to range this accumulation
of elegance and wisdom into an alphabetical series, I soon discovered
that the bulk of my volumes would fright away the student, and was
forced to depart from my scheme of including all that was pleasing or
useful in English literature, and reduce my transcripts very often
to clusters of words, in which scarcely any meaning is retained; thus
to the weariness of copying, I was condemned to add the vexation
of expunging. Some passages I have yet spared, which may relieve
the labour of verbal searches, and intersperse with verdure and
flowers the dusty desarts of barren philology.

The examples, thus mutilated, are no longer to be considered as
conveying the sentiments or doctrine of their authours; the word
for the sake of which they are inserted, with all its appendant
clauses, has been carefully preserved; but it may sometimes happen,
by hasty detruncation, that the general tendency of the sentence
may be changed: the divine may desert his tenets, or the philosopher
his system.