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The Evolution of English Lexicography
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literary quotations, and the more delicate appreciation, and discrimination of senses which this involved and rendered possible. 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.' But when he reached Instilment, his memory became vague, and forgetting that he had already quoted the passage under Distilment, he quoted it again as 'the leperous instilment'—a reading which does not exist in any text