In the collection of these he displayed immense research.
Going far beyond the limits of Dr. Johnson, he quoted from authors
back to the year 1300, and probably for the first time made Chaucer
and Gower and Piers Ploughman living names to many readers. And his
special notion was quite correct _in theory_. Quotations _will_ tell
the full meaning of a word, _if one has enough of them_; but it takes
a great many to be enough, and it takes a reader a long time to read
and weigh all the quotations, and to deduce from them the meanings
which might be put before him in a line or two. As a fact, while
Richardson's notion was correct in theory, mundane conditions of space
and time rendered it humanly impracticable. Nevertheless, the mass of
quotations, most of them with exact references, collected by him, and
printed under the word-groups which they illustrated, was a service
never to be undervalued or forgotten, and his work, 'A New Dictionary
of the English Language ... Illustrated by Quotations from the best
Authors' by Charles Richardson, LL.D., 1836-7, still continues to be a
valuable repertory of illustrations.
Such was the position of English lexicography in the middle of the
nineteenth century, when the late Dr.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59