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Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books written by Charles W. Eliot

C >> Charles W. Eliot >> Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books




Some senses, however, there are, which, though not the same, are
yet so nearly allied, that they are often confounded. Most men
think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness; and
consequently some examples might be indifferently put to either
signification: this uncertainty is not to be imputed to me, who do not
form, but register the language; who do not teach men how they should
think, but relate how they have hitherto expressed their thoughts.

The imperfect sense of some examples I lamented, but could not remedy,
and hope they will be compensated by innumerable passages selected
with propriety, and preserved with exactness; some shining with sparks
of imagination, and some replete with treasures of wisdom.

The orthography and etymology, though imperfect, are not imperfect
for want of care, but because care will not always be successful, and
recollection or information come too late for use.

That many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, must be frankly
acknowledged; but for this defect I may boldly allege that it is
unavoidable; I could not visit caverns to learn the miner's language,
nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation,
nor visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of artificers, to
gain the names of wares, tools, and operations, of which no mention is
found in books; what favorable accident or easy inquiry brought within
my reach, has not been neglected; but it had been a hopeless labor to
glean up words, by courting living information, and contesting with
the sullenness of one, and the roughness of another.

To furnish the Academicians _della Crusca_ with words of this kind, a
series of comedies called _La Fiera_, or _The Fair_, was professedly
written by Buonaroti; but I had no such assistant, and therefore was
content to want what they must have wanted likewise, had they not
luckily been so supplied.

Nor are all words which are not found in the vocabulary, to be
lamented as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of the
people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of
their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and
though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly
unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase
or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of
a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things
unworthy of preservation.

Care will sometimes betray to the appearance of negligence. He that is
catching opportunities which seldom occur, will suffer those to pass
by unregarded, which he expects hourly to return; he that is searching
for rare and remote things, will neglect those that are obvious and
familiar: thus many of the most common and cursory words have
been inserted with little illustration, because in gathering the
authorities, I forebore to copy those which I thought likely to occur
whenever they were wanted. It is remarkable that, in reviewing my
collection, I found the word _sea_ unexemplified.

Thus it happens, that in things difficult there is danger from
ignorance, and in things easy, from confidence; the mind, afraid of
greatness, and disdainful of littleness, hastily withdraws herself
from painful searches, and passes with scornful rapidity over tasks
not adequate to her powers; sometimes too secure for caution, and
again too anxious for vigorous effort; sometimes idle in a plain path,
and sometimes distracted in labyrinths, and dissipated by different
intentions.

A large work is difficult because it is large, even though all its
parts might singly be performed with facility; where there are many
things to be done, each must be allowed its share of time and labor,
in the proportion only which it bears to the whole; nor can it be
expected, that the stones which form the dome of a temple, should be
squared and polished like the diamond of a ring.

Of the event of this work, for which; having labored it with so much
application, I cannot but have some degree of parental fondness, it
is natural to form conjectures. Those who have been persuaded to think
well of my design, will require that it should fix our language, and
put a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto
been suffered to make in it without opposition. With this consequence
I will confess that I flattered myself for a while; but now begin
to fear that I have indulged expectation which neither reason nor
experience can justify. When we see men grow old and die at a certain
time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the
elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with
equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to
produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and
phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm
his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in
his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from
folly, vanity, and affectation.

With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard
the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse
intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain;
sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain
syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of
pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. The French
language has visibly changed under the inspection of the Academy;
the style of Amelot's translation of Father Paul is observed by Le
Courayer to be _un peu passe_; and no Italian will maintain that the
diction of any modern writer is not perceptibly different from that of
Boccace, Machiavel, or Caro.

Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen;
conquests and migrations are now very rare: but there are other causes
of change, which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in
their progress, are perhaps as much superior to human resistance, as
the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. Commerce,
however necessary, however lucrative, as it depraves the manners,
corrupts the language; they that have frequent intercourse with
strangers, to whom they endeavor to accommodate themselves, must
in time learn a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the
traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This will not
always be confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but
will be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people, and be
at last incorporated with the current speech.

There are likewise internal causes equally forcible. The language most
likely to continue long without alterations, would be that of a nation
raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from
strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life;
either without books, or, like some of the Mahometan countries, with
every few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as
common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same
notions by the same signs. But no such constancy can be expected in a
people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part
of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labor of the
other. Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging
the stock of ideas; and every increase of knowledge, whether real or
fancied, will produce new words, or combination of words. When the
mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience;
when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift
opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must
perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech
in the same proportion as it alters practice.

As by the cultivation of various sciences a language is amplified, it
will be more furnished with words deflected from their original sense;
the geometrician will talk of a courtier's zenith or the eccentric
virtue of a wild hero, and the physician, of sanguine expectations and
phlegmatic delays. Copiousness of speech will give opportunities to
capricious choice, by which some words will be preferred, and others
degraded; vicissitudes of fashion will enforce the use of new, or
extend the signification of known terms. The tropes of poetry will
make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will become the
current sense: pronunciation will be varied by levity or ignorance,
and the pen must at length comply with the tongue; illiterate writers
will, at one time or other, by public infatuation, rise into renown,
who, not knowing the original import of words, will use them with
colloquial licentiousness, confound distinction, and forget propriety.
As politeness increases, some expressions will be considered as
too gross and vulgar for the delicate, others as too formal and
ceremonious for the gay and airy; new phrases are therefore adopted,
which must for the same reasons be in time dismissed. Swift, in his
petty treatise on the English language, allows that new words must
sometimes be introduced, but proposes that none should be suffered
to become obsolete. But what makes a word obsolete, more than general
agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be continued, when it
conveys an offensive idea, or recalled again into the mouths of
mankind, when it has once become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing
by unfamiliarity?

There is another cause of alteration more prevalent than any other,
which yet in the present state of the world cannot be obviated. A
mixture of two languages will produce a third distinct from both, and
they will always be mixed, where the chief parts of education, and
the most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient or in foreign
tongues. He that has long cultivated another language, will find
its words and combinations crowd upon his memory; and haste and
negligence, refinement and affectation, will obtrude borrowed terms
and exotic expressions.

The great pest of speech is frequency of translation. No book was ever
turned from one language into another, without imparting something
of its native idiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive
innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and the fabric of the
tongue continue the same; but new phraseology changes much at once;
it alters not the single stones of the building, but the order of the
columns. If an academy should be established for the cultivation of
our style--which I, who can never wish to see dependence multiplied,
hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy--let them,
instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries, endeavor, with all
their influence, to stop the license of translators, whose idleness
and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble
a dialect of France.

If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to
acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses
of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we
palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though
death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have
a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our
constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.

In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be
immortal, I have devoted this book, the labor of years, to the honor
of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology,
without a contest, to the nations of the continent. The chief glory of
every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add any thing by
my own writings to the reputation of English literature, must be left
to time: much of my life has been lost under the pressures of
disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in
provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think
my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations,
and distant ages, gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and
understand the teachers of truth; if my labors afford light to the
repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to
Milton, and to Boyle.

When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on my book,
however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a
man that has endeavored well. That it will immediately become popular
I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible
absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free,
may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance into
contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never
can be wanting some who distinguish desert; who will consider that no
dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it
is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling
away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and
that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design
includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what
he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by
eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task
which Scaliger compares to the labors of the anvil and the mine; that
what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always
present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance,
slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the
mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain
trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he
knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his
thoughts to-morrow.

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not
be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was
ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is
little solicitous to know whence proceed the faults of that which it
condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English
Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and
without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities
of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst
inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may
repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our
language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt
which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of
ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes,
be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive;
if the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian
academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the
embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon
their work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second
edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of
perfection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what
would it avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I
wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage
are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity,
having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.


TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD

February 7, 1755.

MY LORD:

I have lately been informed by the proprietor of _The World_, that two
papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public, were
written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor which,
being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not
well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address; and I could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself 'Le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre'; that I might obtain that regard
for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so
little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to
continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I
had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly
scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well
pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication,
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile
of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron
before.

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has
been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.
I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations
where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Public
should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should
conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
so much exultation,

My Lord, Your Lordship's most humble,

Most obedient servant, SAM. JOHNSON.


[Footnote A: For a sketch of Johnson's life, see the Introduction to
"Life of Addison" in the volume of English Essays. The interest of his
preface to the great Dictionary need hardly be pointed out, since the
work itself is a landmark in the history of our language. The letter
to Chesterfield, short though it is is a document of great importance
in the freeing of literature from patronage, and is in itself a
notable piece of literature. The preface to Johnson's edition of
Shakespeare's plays not only explains the editor's conception of
his task, but contains what is perhaps the best appreciation of the
dramatist written in the eighteenth century.]




PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE

BY SAMUEL JOHNSON. (1765)


That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the
honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint
likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing
to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those,
who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients,
are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and
flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will
be at last bestowed by time.

Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of
mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason,
but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever
has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes
co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past
than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the
shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity.
The great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the
moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet
living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is
dead, we rate them by his best.

To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and
definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon
principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to
observation and experience, no other test can he applied than
length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long
possessed they have often examined and compared; and if they persist
to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have
confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature no
man can properly call a river deep, or a mountain high, without the
knowledge of many mountains, and many rivers; so in the productions of
genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with
other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately displays its
power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but
works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion
to the general and collective ability of man, as it is discovered in a
long succession of endeavours. Of the first building that was raised,
it might be with certainty determined that it was round or square; but
whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The
Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but
the poems of _Homer_ we yet know not to transcend the common limits
of human intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and
century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose
his incidents, new-name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.

The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises
therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of
past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is
the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what
has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most
considered is best understood.

The Poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now
begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of
established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived
his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.
Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions,
local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost;
and every topick of merriment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes of
artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they
once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end;
the tradition of his friendships and his enemies has perished; his
works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with
invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity; but
are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are
therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted
by interest or passion, they have past through variations of taste
and changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to
another, have received new honours at every transmission.

But because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon
certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long
continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion;
it is proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence
_Shakespeare_ has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen.

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of
general nature. Particular manner, can be known to few, and therefore
few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular
combinations of fanciful invention may delight a-while, by that
novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but
the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can
only repose on the stability of truth.

_Shakespeare_ is above all writers, at least above all modern writers,
the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful
mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the
customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world;
by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate
but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or
temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity,
such as the world will always supply, and observation will always
find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general
passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole
system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets
a character is too often an individual; in those of _Shakespeare_ it
is commonly a species.

It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction
is derived. It is this which fills the plays of _Shakespeare_ with
practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of _Euripides_, that
every verse was a precept; and it may be said of _Shakespeare_, that
from his works may be collected a system of civil and oeconomical
prudence. Yet his real power is not shewn in the splendour of
particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the
tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select
quotations, will succeed like the pedant in _Hierocles_, who, when
he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a
specimen.