Samuel Johnson could not have disagreed more. At least he wanted to have no truck with ordering the language to remain pure. He might have liked it to, but he knew it couldn’t be done. As to whether he thought it possible or desirable to fix it, theses have tumbled by the score from academic presses in recent years, arguing variously that Johnson did want to or that he did not. The consensus now is that he originally planned to make a fix on the tongue, but when he was halfway through his six-year task, he came to realize that it was both impossible and undesirable.
