express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that
a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to 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 surprize 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 tomorrow.

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 authour, 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 oeconomy, and give their second edition another form,