There were some critics. The fact that Johnson allowed his own personality to invade the pages may today seem pleasant whimsy, but to some who wanted the book to be supremely authoritative, it was irritatingly unprofessional. Many writers sniped at the limited authority of some of those whom Johnson quoted—a criticism that Johnson himself anticipated in his preface. Some found the definitions patchy—some trite, some unnecessarily complicated (as with network: “any thing reticulated, or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections”). A century after publication the
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