ing in Holborn, where he and his six copyists sat in an upper chamber fitted up like a counting-house; he had to get another lodging in Gough Square. Worse than all, he soon discovered that the bulk of my volumes would fright away the student; thus to the weariness of copying I was condemned to add the vexation of expunging;" and I have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations ;" and he had to collect materials by "fortuitous and unguided excursions into books," out of "the boundless chaos of living speech ;" and he knew that among unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries, the slave of science, doomed only to remove rubbish," and that, though "every other author may aspire to praise, the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach!" Yes. And let the sigh come out again, Poor Johnson! Lexicographer," he writes, when he has worked up to that word in his two giant volumes-that are half a yard high, that are nearly a foot wide, that are nearly a finger thick, that weigh pounds and pounds Lexicographer;" and he puts to it the celebrated definition, "A writer of dictionories; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the significance of words." And can it cause wonder? Leaving that, however, which was personal to Johnson, let notice be taken solely to Johnson's work. Attention must be called to that spelling "dictionories." It is an error crept in. It is an earnest of a thousand errors-and weaknesses, and omissions, and false notions, and unnecessary verbiage, and failure to hit-that also crept in, in spite of all the learning of Johnson, and all his research, and all his exhausting care. Able as he was, concentrated as he could make himself, he could only go as far as the knowledge of his day had gone; he could only see as far as his human eyes would let him see. So he omits predilection, respectable, bulky, mimetic, isolated, mimical, decompose, etc., of accident; he shall not put in, he says of purpose, such words as Socinian, Calvinist, Mahometan; as greenish, and the family of ish; as vileness, or any ending in ness; as dully, or any ending in ly; such are not wanted. John Ash, a

It

close successor of his, and a very blundering copyer, as Phillips was of Blount, is received as a lexicographical joke always, because, while writing such things as Bihovac, rather an incorrect spelling for biovac," and for not giving the right word, Bivouac, at all, he puts down Esoteric (adj.), an incorrect spelling for exoteric, which see. But Johnson had not esoteric or exoteric either. Science had not advanced sufficiently to make those words required for her vocabulary; or else he forgot them. Johnson thought, also, it was philology to write down "Exciseman, from excise and man ;" and Feather-bed, from feather and bed ;" and "Looking-glass, from look and glass," and so forth. seemed expedient to him, too, as an example, to say of network (after philologizing it very helpfully, from net and work), "anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections." It never occurred to him that reticulate and decussate, and interstice and intersection, would each one require as much searching for as network, and, being four words for one, would give four times the trouble. Then there was that class of definitions he would never consent to have expunged, of which excise is a well-known illustration. Excise,' wrote, a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." After remaking which, Johnson's immense work, laden to the margins with its glorious quotations, has also to be hoisted up on to the shelves-taking a heavy lurch to do it, and Johnson's work has, very reluctantly, to be let go.

he

He had successors of all sorts, in shoals. They have counted 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, and more. There was Buchanan-to touch one or two of the

most notable, here and there. There was Johnston, particular in his pronunciation, and getting (for one) Sirrah pronounced Serra, while his contemporaries insisted it should be Sarra. There was Kenrick, the originator of the London Review, and the libeller of Garrick. There was Entick. There was Perry. There was Nares. There was Sheridan, telling his public to say Wen'z-da, and Skee-i, and Skee-i-lark, and Ghee-arden,

and Ghee-ide, and so on: he being sure of his position because he had read three or four hours a day to Swift, had heard Chesterfield and the Duke of Dorset speak, and knew pronunciation had been uniform in the time of Queen Anne, and had only been defaced by "the advent of a foreign family," viz., of course, the Hanoverian line. There was Walker, saying (on Sheridan's report), how Swift used to jeer the people who called the wind winn'd, by "I have a great minn'd to finn'd why you pronounce it winn'd," and how he was met by the retort, "If I may be so boold, I should be glad to be toold why you pronounce it goold.' There was Scott. There was George Mason, raving about Johnson's "uniform monotony of bombast ;" his ridiculous blunders' exceeding 4300; his "numberless literary transgressions;" his culpable omissions ;' with his own splendid renunciation, on his own part, of the wish to plunder poor Johnson of his multifarious literary infamy;" with his ugly little phrase that the Rambler' is an article 1 should be most ashamed to own the penning of." There was Jodrell. There was Richardson, proclaiming Johnson's "Dictionary" a failure, his first conceptions not commensurate to his task, and his subsequent performance not even approaching the measure of his original design;" proclaiming himself no-saying," he may be arraigned for a vainglorious estimate of himself,' while it is quite clear he thinks too-glorious an estimate every way impossible. There was Todd. There were Webster and Worcester; American, both; remarkable, in their early days, for so much quarelling, that a hillock of pamphlets carried on the strife for months, setting down testimonials, anti-testimonials, advertisements, amounts of sales, narratives, etc.; and giving opportunity to Dr. Worcester to say of some of Dr. Webster's words, it has been my intention scrupulously to avoid them. You coined them, or stamped them anew, to enrich or embellish the language. They are Ammony, Bridegoom, Canail, Leland, Naivty, Nightmar, Prosopopy" (and more). I am willing that you should for ever have the entire and exclusive possession of them."

This is enough. There is conception by now, perhaps, of the mass of diction. aries there is for the student to roam among and the giddy bewilderment likely to come from the consultation of column after column of them, of page after page, of author after author pressing into notice by the lively score. It shall be concluded that this is so. What, then, will be the giddiness of bewilderment when there is the announcement, now, by way of conclusion, that there is no dictionary of the English language in existence as yet at all? It will sound prodigious; it will sound stupendous; it will sound of the sort that will entail a reference to a dictionary at once (any one will do; that one nearest at hand) to try and select a word that shall fitly express absurdity or the wildest intrepidity. Yet this will only be-until there is consideration. What-as a beginning of such consideration-have all these dictionaries, into which this has been a peep, amounted to? There has been ignorance, in many, when they are touched on the score of utility (their raison d'être), not charm of reading ; there has been superfluousness; there has been folly; there have been errors and omissions, and plagiarisms, and personal warpings, and irrelevant detail, that make up as curious a chapter in literary history as is anywhere to be found. And what, on the other hand-to consider more-is it clear by now that a dictionary ought to be? The Philological Society, at the instigation of Archbishop (then Dean) Trench, so long ago as 1857, essayed to answer this question. Its members decided to sound, and dig, to lay deep and sure foundations, for a dictionary that should include all English words, in all centuries. in all meanings, with a quotation to support each of these in each and every stage-a quotation, moreover, with book, chapter, and verse appended, that it might, for all time, be open to verification. They called upon all lovers of the English language to aid them in collecting these quotations from all English books. They appealed to all who were competent, and who felt the impulse to be more than mere collectors, to aid them in arranging these countless quotations; in combining them into word groups, and special sense groups, and

chronological series, ready for an editor's manipulation. Then they saw that an editor, like a master-architect, could build upon this broad and enduring foundation; could combine, and harmonize, and complete, all these conspiring efforts; could rear aloft upon them at length the fair fabric of the diction ary that ought to be. It was a proud scheme. It would result in a complete history of each word, it was seen-and intended. The birth would be shown, the growth, the death-where death had come. Clearly, up to the date of the publication of such a dictionary, the English language, without bias, would have representation through and through; also, after the date of such a publication, the further additions of further centuries to the English language would only need interpolation, in edition after edition, to let the complete representation evermore go on. But adverse circumstances arose : the firstnominated editor-enthusiastic, brilliant, loveable-Herbert Coleridge, dead. The shock to the nascent dictionary was sharp and severe; and though Mr. Furnivall, zealous in forming the Early English Text Society, the Chaucer and other societies-founding them chiefly that the welfare of the dictionary might be promoted-did all that was in his power to keep the work heartily in hand, there came a chill to the warm spread of it, and it almost burnt down. Happily this depression is past. was only momentary to lead to better energy and better consolidation; it

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was only till there had been sufficient recovery to look at the undertaking anew; and now that the Philological Society has secured the acceptance of its plan by the University of Oxford— has secured its execution at the cost and with the typographical resources of the university press-now that, in its late president, Dr. Murray, it possesses once more a master-builder especially competent to the mighty task, and willing to give his life to its completion, there can be no possible fear felt as to the result. At his call, 800 volunteers have united their efforts to complete the gleaning and garnering in of quotations; at his call, twenty scholars are lending their aid to rough-hew these into preparatory form, twenty more have placed their special knowledge at his service, in case of special need. The right spirit is in this method of attacking the subject, clearly. As a result, as much as two-thirds of the preliminary labor is announced as done. Further, twelve months hence Dr. Murray is in full hope that he will be able to present the first-fruits of work the seed of which, as has been seen, was sown a quarter of a century ago. And though all this, possibly, is too well known in literary circles, is attracting too much literary interest, to have made any reference necessary to it here, yet, while among the dictionaries, it would have been gauche-it would have been even ungrateful to have left it out.-Cornhill Magazine.

In the course of some recent inquiries into visual memory, I was greatly struck by the frequency of the replies in which my informants described themselves as subject to "visions." visions." Those of whom Those of whom I speak were sane and healthy, but were subject notwithstanding to visual presentations, for which they could not often account, and which in a few cases reached the level of hallucinations. This unexpected prevalence of a visionary tendency among persons who form a part of ordinary society seems to me suggestive and worthy of being put on record. In a previous article I spoke of the faculty of summoning scenes at will, with more or less distinctness, before the visual memory; in this I shall speak of the tendency among sane and healthy persons to see images flash unaccountably into existence.

Many of my facts are derived from personal friends of whose accuracy I have no doubt. Another group comes from correspondents who have written at length with much painstaking, and whose letters appear to me to bear internal marks of scrupulous truthfulness. A third part has been collected for me by many kind friends in many countries, each of whom has made himself or herself an independent centre of inquiry; and the last, and much the most numerous portion, consists of brief replies by strangers to a series of questions contained in a circular that I drew up. I have gone over all this matter with great care and have cross-tested it in many ways while it was mulating, just as any conscientious statistician would, before I began to form conclusions. I was soon convinced of its substantial trustworthiness, and that conviction has in no way been. shaken by subsequent experience. In short, the evidence of the four groups I have just mentioned is quite as consistent as could have been reasonably desired.

accu

The lowest order of phenomena that admit of being classed as visions, are

* See a previous article on "Mental Imagery."

the Number forms" to which I have drawn attention on more than one occasion, but to which I must again very briefly allude. They are an abiding mental peculiarity in a certain proportion. of persons (say 5 per cent), who are unable as adults, and who have been ever unable as far back as they can recollect, to think of any number without referring it to its own particular habitat in their mental field of view. It there lies latent, but is instantly evoked by the thought or mention of it, or by any mental operation in which it is concerned. The thought of a series of consecutive numbers is therefore attended by a vision of them arranged in a perfectly defined and constant position, and this I have called a "Number form.' Its origin can rarely be referred to any nursery diagram, to the clock-face, or to any incident of childhood. Nay, the form is frequently unlike anything the child could possibly have seen, reaching in long vistas and perspectives, and in curves of double curvature. I have even had to get wire models made by some of my informants in explanation of what they wished to convey. The only feature that, all the forms have in common is their dependence in some way or other upon the method of verbal counting, as shown by their angles and other divisions occurring at such points as those where the 'teens begin, at the twenty's, thirty's, and so on. The forms are in each case absolutely unchangeable except through a gradual development in complexity. Their diversity is endless, and the number forms of different men are mutually unintelligible.

These strange visions," which are extremely vivid in some cases, are almost incredible to the vast majority of mankind, who would set them down as fantastic nonsense, but they are familiar parts of the mental furniture of the rest, where they have grown naturally and where they remain unmodified and unmodifiable by teaching. I have received many touching accounts of their childish experiences from persons who see the number forms, and the other curious