JOHNSON, Samuel

JOHNSON, Samuel [1709–84]. English lexicographer, critic, poet, and moralist, who achieved through his Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and the model of his own writings pre-eminence in his lifetime as an authority on the language. Such comprehensive scholarly works as his edition of SHAKESPEARE (1765) and The Lives of the English Poets (1779–81) drew, like his DICTIONARY, on an encyclopedic knowledge of the authors of his age.

The Dictionary, commissioned by a group of London book-sellers, was in part a response to a widely felt need in the late 17c and early 18c for stability in the language and for canons of correctness in usage. As a language of scholarly communication, English was seen to lack the permanence and concision of LATIN, and the efforts of the French and Italian Academies in bringing about improvements in the vernacular were known and envied. Proposals, especially c.1660–1710, for establishing an English ACADEMY to ‘fix’ the language had come to nothing, and on publication of the Dictionary he was accorded the status of a one-man academy.

Work on the Dictionary took eight or nine years, and was carried out mainly in the large garret at Johnson's house in Gough Square, London. He is thought to have used an interleaved copy of Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum as a foundation word list and had the help of some half a dozen amanuenses, who copied out the quotations which he had chosen. Johnson's perception of his task as a lexicographer changed while the Dictionary was in hand. When he published the Plan of an English Dictionary (1747), he saw himself as a verbal critic, condemning barbarous words and expressions, and guarding the purity of the language. But in the Preface (1755), he disclaimed that intention, saying that all the stubborn uncertainties of usage were not to be blamed on him, since his task was not to form, but merely to record the language.

Johnson's influence

The influence of his work on the development of the language has been widely assumed but cannot be proved and is difficult to assess. In particular, it is often held to have fixed English, spelling; printers' spelling had, however, been established largely in the modern form before 1700, and where Johnson differed from it in his dictionary entries (as in words such as logick and errour) his recommended form has often failed to survive. It is nonetheless likely that, through the countless abbreviated and miniature editions running well into the 19c, the Dictionary played a role in propagating a standard spelling among the less literate and in forming and restraining the writings of the educated. Earlier monolingual dictionaries were mainly concerned with ‘hard’ words: the bookish, Latinate, and technical vocabulary of Renaissance English. Except sometimes in providing etymologies, they were non-historical and paid little regard to literary usage. Johnson differed in seeking to illustrate the meanings of words by literary quotation. He favoured the usage of the preceding century, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden alone accounting for a third of all quotations. The arrangement of his citations is chronological, and Johnson commonly surpasses his predecessors in the elegance of his definitions: enchant ‘to subdue by charms or spells’; graceful ‘beautiful with dignity’; insinuative ‘stealing on the affections’. It can be said that Johnson provided a powerful but conservative model of language usage for at least a century after his time. See ENGLISH IN ENGLAND, JOHNSONESE, JOHNSONIAN, JOURNALISM, PHILOLOGY, PHRASAL VERB, PROSE, SPELLING REFORM.