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The Times, London, <br>
Sunday March 27, 2005 <br>
<br>
Dr Johnson's Dictionary, by Henry Hitchings<br>
<br>
REVIEWED BY JOHN CAREY<br>
<br>
<b>DR JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that
Defined the World <br>
by Henry Hitchings<br>
</b> <br>
<i>J Murray £14.99 pp288</i> <br>
<br>
<b>SAMUEL JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY: Selections from the 1755 Work that
Defined the English Language<br><br>
edited by Jack Lynch<br><br>
</b> <i>Atlantic £19.99 pp654<br><br>
</i><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-1538074,00.html">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-1538074,00.html</a><br><br>
Samuel Johnson is the only famous writer who is better known for what he
said than for what he wrote. Essays, poems, biographies, drama and
fiction flowed from his pen, and they are all forgotten. Most people
would be hard put to it to name even their titles. On the other hand, we
all know who said that no one but a blockhead ever wrote except for
money, or that when a man knows he is going to be hanged it concentrates
his mind wonderfully, or that a woman preaching is like a dog walking on
its hind legs. Like most other Johnsonisms, these were published by
Boswell after Johnson's death, and we can never be sure how far Boswell's
Johnson was Boswell's invention.<br><br>
Henry Hitchings's ingenious and fascinating book shifts the focus
back to the indisputably real Johnson by combing through the 42,773
entries in his Dictionary for evidence of his beliefs, prejudices,
hang-ups, cultural context and occasional ignorance. Jack Lynch's
beautifully produced volume of selections from the Dictionary, including
its moving preface, perfectly complements Hitchings, and both celebrate
the 250th anniversary of Johnson's mighty achievement. The Dictionary was
published on April 15, 1755, and had taken eight years to compile.
Johnson worked almost single-handedly, employing only half a dozen
raggle-taggle copyists chosen, with typical kindness, because they were
poor and starving. By contrast the French Dictionnaire had, as Johnson
enjoyed noting, taken 40 scholars 55 years. His was not the first English
dictionary, but it instantly eclipsed its rivals and held the fort for a
century and a half. It was Johnson's dictionary that Robert Browning read
through in order to "qualify" as a poet, and that Becky Sharp,
in Thackeray's Vanity Fair, flung into Miss Pinkerton's garden (actually
it must have been one of the many abridgments, because even Becky could
not have launched Johnson's two-volume, 20lb monster into the
air).<br><br>
To illustrate the meanings of words, Johnson supplied 114,000
quotations from books covering every branch of learning and going back to
the 16th century. Nothing remotely comparable had been done before, and
it made his dictionary into a superior prototype of the internet a
bulging lucky-dip of wisdom, anecdote, humour, legend and fact. Nobody
but Johnson could have done it, because nobody had read so much. A
bookseller's son, he had been ravenously turning pages since childhood.
Sickly, half-blind and racked by strange tics and spasms that attracted
ridicule, he read to escape the pain of life. He "tore the heart out
of books", it was said, often returning them to their owners badly
mauled. To compile the dictionary, he waded through acres of print,
marking passages that clarified a word's meaning, then handing them to
his little band of paupers who copied them out onto thousands of
slips.<br><br>
Thanks to these labours, his dictionary was the first to record not
some lexicographer's ideal of what words ought to mean, but how they had
actually been used. He seems, when he started out, to have entertained
hopes that his dictionary would "fix" the English language and
banish errors. But he quickly came to realise that languages live by
changing, and he was the first to formulate the modern concept of
lexicography as an endlessly evolving record of usage. For someone of
Johnson's politics this must have been a difficult adjustment. A diehard
Tory monarchist, he disliked change and hated busybody reformers. The
devil, he told Boswell, was the first Whig. But throwing out dictatorial
ideas of lexicography fitted in with his British love of freedom. Other
countries, he observed, had set up academies to regulate usage, but
"to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the
undertakings of pride".<br><br>
Slavery repelled him. He took a freed slave, Francis Barber, into
his house, and bequeathed him the bulk of his estate. His opinion of
Americans ("I am willing to love all mankind," he confessed,
"except an American") stemmed partly from the colonists'
doublethink about freedom and slavery: "How is it that we hear the
loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?"<br><br>
Like his recognition of "general agreement" as the shaping
force behind language, his inclusion of "low" words in the
dictionary was a democratic gesture. Hitchings thinks his copyists may
have done their bit by introducing their employer to the cant of crooks
and cardsharps. "Giglet: A wanton", "Fopdoodle: A
fool", "Dandiprat: An urchin", "Jobbernowl: A
blockhead", and many more, flaunt their garish charms in Lynch's
selection. Hitchings shows, too, how Johnson's definitions display
aspects of his personality the poet ("Puppet: A wooden
tragedian"); the scientist, ("Network: Anything reticulated or
decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the
intersections"); the religious melancholic ("Obsession: The
first attack of Satan, antecedent to possession"); the moralist
("Suicide: The horrid crime of destroying oneself"); the
intellectual ("Stockjobber: A low wretch who gets money by buying
and selling shares").<br><br>
His limitations are also exposed. "Sonata" is defined
merely as "A tune", reflecting his indifference to music. He
once remarked, at a performance by a celebrated violinist,
"Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible." He
was not good at predicting which words would survive. "To
dumbfound", "ignoramus", "shabby" and
"simpleton" struck him as substandard and probably ephemeral,
whereas he commended "ultimity" (meaning "the last
stage") and "to warray" (to make war) as useful additions
to the language. National self-respect obliged him to draw the line at
French words, so "bourgeois" and "champagne" are
omitted, although current at the time.<br><br>
Popular accounts of Johnson turn him into a lovable eccentric,
which is a way of avoiding his brainpower. Hitchings will have none of
this. He keeps drawing attention to the unremitting intelligence that
Johnson's lexicographical labours demanded, not least in separating out
the ramifying senses of common words. The dictionary's entry for the verb
"take" distinguishes 133 meanings and has 363 illustrative
quotations. Johnson's psychological observations reflect similar
acuteness. True, he had his soft side, as his fondness for his cat Hodge
testifies. But he would not have seen that as a weakness. Want of
tenderness, he told Boswell, was a sure sign of stupidity. His insight
into people, including himself, was sharp and hard, and schooled by
poverty. He had to leave Oxford after a year because funds ran out, and
when, later in life, he heard he had a reputation for being
"frolicsome" there, he curtly demurred: "I was rude and
violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic."<br><br>
He knew that poverty poisons the closest relationships. "Poor
people's children never respect them," he told Boswell, adducing, as
evidence, his disrespect for his own mother. Both remarks are worth
pondering today. Our tendency to criticise the poor for their unhealthy
lifestyles and dysfunctional families would elicit sharp retorts from
Johnson. His morality is a corrective to our destructively unequal
society, and it matters, in the end, far more than any dictionary.
Hitchings's book, among its other excellences, never loses sight of
that.<br>
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