Only where he had no quotations did Johnson insert words from Bailey's
folio, or other source, with _Dict._ as the authority. The literary
quotations were entirely supplied by himself from his capacious
memory, or from books specially perused and marked by him for
extraction. When he first began his work in the room in Gough Square,
his whole time was devoted to thus reading and marking books, from
which six clerkly assistants copied the marked quotations. The fact
that many of the quotations were inserted from memory without
verification (a practice facilitated by Johnson's plan of merely
naming the author, without specifying the particular work quoted, or
giving any reference whereby the passage could be turned up) is
undoubtedly the reason why many of the quotations are not verbally
exact. Even so, however, they are generally adequate for the purpose
for which they are adduced, that is, they usually contain the word for
which they are quoted, and the context is more or less accurately
rendered. But in some cases it is otherwise: Johnson's memory played
him false, and he quotes a passage for a word that it does not
actually contain. As an example, under _Distilment_ he correctly
quotes from _Hamlet_, 'And in the porches of mine ears did pour the
leperous distilment.
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