farfel_n04_110_276

Dr. Johnson undertook his great work single-handed,
expecting to finish it in 3 yrs. but the labor was
enormous, and 8 years [insert] (1746 - 1755) [end insert] were consumed...Grolier 100) It
ranks as the most astounding one-man feat in the field.
Nathan Bailey 1736 ed. of the Dictionarium
Britannicus - perhaps the most important English
dictionary before Johnson's.
Johnson himself revised the book for the 4th ed. of 1773.
The volumes - 2000, huge 2320 page sets at L4/10 -
the pair printed by W. Strahan were bounr in March and
published in April.
It is the dictionary itself which justifies Noah
Webster's statement that "Johnson's writings had,
in philology, the effect which Newton's discoveries
had in mathematics."