Read the excerpt from Samuel Johnson's preface to A Dictionary of the English Language. From the authours which rose in the time
of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. If the language of theology were extracted from H**ker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost to mankind, for want of English words, in which they might be expressed. It is not sufficient that a word is found, unless it be so combined as that its meaning is apparently determined by the tract and tenour of the sentence; such passages I have therefore chosen. How is Johnson’s approach innovative? He defines literary and poetic terms. He studies the diction of everyday speech. He relies on the credibility of established authors. He refuses to include biblical terminology.
