Samuel Johnson & the Journey Into Words PDF
Preview Samuel Johnson & the Journey Into Words
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi Samuel Johnson Journey Words LYNDA MUGGLESTONE 1 OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OXDP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries ©LyndaMugglestone Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin Impression: Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicence,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber: ISBN –––– Printedandboundby CPIGroup(UK)Ltd,CroydonCRYY LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi Contents Preface vi Listoffigures xi Journeysintowords WritingtheDictionary:Departuresanddestinations ‘Excursionsintobooks’:Documentingthenewworld ofwords Theorderedstate:Power,authority,andthewrittenword Meaning,governance,andthe‘coloursofwords’ Defendingthecitadel,patrollingtheborders Historyandthefluxoftime Thepraiseofperfection Appendix:– Notes References Index OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi Preface Inagood introduction,Johnsonwrote inRambler,‘something ...must be discovered, and something concealed’. The ‘intellectual appetite’ must be stimulated but not satiated: ‘He that reveals too much, or promises too little...equally defeats his own purpose.’1 Johnson’s maxims offer a challenge for all prefaces in an image of perfectionthatthisparticularPrefacewillundoubtedlyfailtoreach. A sense of the productive tension which must exist between what is—or is not—concealed resonates widely within Johnson’s own work. As for Lawrence Lipking, Johnson often occupies an intri- guing ‘double register’ in ways which unite the exploration of dissonant perspectives and approaches.2 Johnson, writes Fussell, is characterized by his ‘all but simultaneous embrace of antithetical opposites’.3 This book, too, was prompted by similar forms of antithesis and contiguity in terms of Johnson’s role as dictionary- maker between and . ‘Opposites’ and ‘contradictions’, in Fussell’sterms,abound. The nature of Johnson’s lexicographical achievement can, of course, contribute to a sense of the, quite literally, ‘monumental’, whetherin Boswell’simage of Johnson as ‘literary Colossus’4or, as forChristopherSmart,inenvisagingtheDictionaryasthelinguistic equivalentofSt.Paul’sCathedral.ForSmart,Johnsonasarchitectof English has—like Wren—constructed an edifice which should endure for all time. Johnson’s Dictionary was a ‘monument of English philology’, he extolled:5 it is ‘a work I look upon with equal pleasure and amazement, as I do upon St. Paul’s Cathedral; each the work of one man, each the work of an Englishman’.6 Johnson’s stated ambitions to ‘fix the English language’, explored in his Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language of ,7 are symbolically rendered in stone in ways which resolve other well- vi OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi PREFACE established tropes of the problematic materiality of English. We need,Swifthadurged,words‘moredurablethanbrass’.8Johnson’s Dictionary, as we will see, came into being against a complex background of both cultural and linguistic expectation in which immutability had long been constructed as a particular object of desire. Yet, against such ambitions for stasis and control, Johnson can, throughout the dictionary years, construct a very different set of imagesfortheenterpriseinwhichheisengaged.Fixity,forexample, exists against his iterated imaging of language as the sea, and lexicography as a voyage, in which ambitions to constrain the ‘intumescence of the tide’ are doomed to failure (Yale XVIII.). AshewritestoThomasWartonin,thedictionaryasjourneyis almostatanend.Inhisimaging,theDictionaryisnotamonument but a ship—undoubtedly ‘vasta mole superbus’ [‘proud in its great bulk’]—but defined, too, by its mobility and, in the days of sail, its inevitable responsiveness to external conditions.9 Johnson embraces, too, as Chapter explores, a set of antithetical identities in which power and powerlessness co-exist. As lexicographical drudge, he must trudge the ‘track of the alphabet’ (Yale XVIII.). As a writer who intends to rule a ‘new world’ of words, his power might have to be absolute, involving—here in ventures of a very different kind—the processes of ‘subjection’ and attack (Yale XVIII.).ThomasTickell’simageofthekindoflinguisticenslave- ment which the proper regulation of English should enforce (‘in happyChainsourdaringLanguagebound,/Shallsportnomorein arbitrary Sound’) can, for Johnson, inform other conflicts of this kind.10 In Johnson’s ‘new world’ of words, the subjects might be quelledincolonialmetaphorsinwhichpowerisprime.Yet,instill otherimages,powerisreversed.Johnson,as‘slaveofscience’(Yale XVIII.),mustsimplyfollowwhereknowledgeleads. While lexicography, as other dictionary-makers confirm, can easily be figured as a journey into words,11 Johnson’s handling of this trope—and the reality of what he does in his own ventures in vii OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi PREFACE this respect—can offer therefore a range of fruitful direction for exploration. For Johnson, the different directions the dictionary- maker might pursue, as well as the state of language that might be reached—andruled—bysuch endeavours,formcompositepartsof whathedescribedinasthe‘longandpainfulvoyage’whichhe hadtaken‘roundtheworldoftheEnglishlanguage’.12 Thedifferentchaptersofthisbook,asChapterdetails,mapthe courseofthefirsteditionoftheDictionary,situatingitbothwithin the lexicographic landscape of its time, as well as within Johnson’s widerwritingbothduringandafterthedictionaryyears.Thestruc- ture is loosely chronological, spanning the years of lexicographical composition from to , though individual chapters often engage with a thematic core—probing the problems (and polyse- mies) of ordering the world of wordsin Chapter, for example, or focussing on the border territories of language in Chapter, where expectations of Johnson as border guard, defending English from incursion,areplacedalongsidehisexplorationintheliminalzones whereEnglishis,perhaps,stillbeingformed.Closeattentionisgiven to the Dictionary itself, and the nuances of Johnson’s evidence and approach—not least in his treatment of variation and change in a languagewhichwas,asheremindedreadersin,alltooalive. ‘Boththeadvantageandthedifficulty’ofwritingabout Johnson, asWalterJacksonBatehasmemorablystressed,‘isthatalmostevery aspectofhisthoughtissointimatelyconnectedwithalltheothers’. Theresult,headds,isthat‘assoonaswepickuponecornerofthe blanket,wesuddenlyfindthewholeofitsbroughtintoourarms’.13 While the Dictionary has often remained outside considerations of this kind, Johnson’s work in his wider life as writer will, in fact, frequently illuminate the nexus of ideas which informed lexicog- raphy in Johnson’s hands. Power and powerlessness, dictatorship and suffrage, human desire and aspiration (in language as all else), the problems of hope and the difficulty of perfection and truth, alongside the conflicted domains of doubt and certainty, as well as theexigencies(andproblems)ofcollection,allemergeasrecurrent viii OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,3/7/2015,SPi PREFACE themes. These add a complex backdrop to the Dictionary, and the directionsthatJohnson—aswriterandlexicographer—mighttake. In language, as Johnson found out, there is, of course, always more to be said, while theconstraints of whatcan be includedin a singleworkimposetheirowntensionsbetweenwhatis‘omitted’as well as ‘performed’ (Yale XVIII.). As Johnson wrote of the Dictionary in , it was, if ended, by no means ‘completed’ (Yale XVIII.). The same applies, if in more pervasive ways, to thisbook:Johnsonaswriteronlanguagecanencompassarangeof topics to which a single volume can scarcely do justice. Individual chapterscouldeasilyhavebeenwrittenonthefourthedition,aswell asonJohnson’sventuresintoregionalEnglishesandothervarieties, or into the language of science, trade, and commerce. Johnson’s engagementwithwhat‘we’doinlanguagesetagainstwhat‘theydo’, in referring to the Scots, offers, for example, some productive lines of further enquiry. As we will see, who ‘we’ are in the Dictionary often raises interesting aspects of English, and English in use. Examples, too, could have been multiplied at a range of points, illuminatingandextendingwhatJohnsondoes.ForJohnson’streat- ment of Scottish, and the patterns that can be observed, I instead referthereadertoMarinaDossena’sinterestingarticle‘“TheCinic Scotomastic”? Johnson, His Commentators, Scots, French, and the Story of English’ in another book which explores the eighteenth- century world of words,14 and, for the fourth edition, to Allen Reddick’s detailed study in The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, – as well as his exploration of the Sneyd–Gimbel mater- ials.15 Johnson is much ‘too profuse in his quotations’, Thomas Edwards expostulated in on the abundance of illustrative examples which the Dictionary contained.16 It is perhaps just as wellthatsomeofthoseonceincludedinthisvolumehavenotmade thefinalcut. Johnson’sthinkingonthelifeofwordsiswide-rangingandoften surprising.Certainly,studentsandcolleagues,aswellasfamilyand friends,mayhavebeensurprisedoverthelastfiveyearsatjusthow ix
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