The Professor and the Madman

by Simon Winchester

Who now really remembers their dictionaries, and who today makes use of all that they achieved? The question begs an inescapably poignant truth, of the kind that dims so many other pioneering achievements in fields that extend beyond and are quite unrelated to this one. The reality, as seen from today’s perspective, is simply: However distinguished the lexicographical works of Thomas Elyot, Robert Cawdrey, Henry Cockeram, and Nathaniel Bailey, and however masterly and pivotal the creation of the Great Cham, Samuel Johnson himself, their achievements seem nowadays to have been only stepping-stones, and their magnificent volumes of work very little more than curios, to be traded, hoarded, and forgotten. And the reason for this is principally that in 1857, just over a century after the publication of the first edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, there came a formal proposal for the making of a brand-new work of truly stellar ambition, a lexicographical project that would be of far, far greater breadth and complexity than anything attempted before.