i.'^t remar/^s on grammar. Teu, li-. 



But if poetry of any sort is but doubtful authority 

 dramatic poetry is, in a particular manner, liable to 

 objection. The di-amatic writer must suit his language 

 to his characters. He must, therefore, occasional- 

 ly make use of overstrained, affected, bombastical ex- 

 prefsions ; vulgar phrases, false idioms of speech, and 

 grammatical blunders must be adopted, before the cha- 

 racters can be naturally delineated. Hence it is, that 

 though few men have a greater veneration for Shake- 

 speare than myself, yet J can conceive few things so 

 absurd as a quotation from Shakespeare, taken indis- 

 criminately, to ascertain the meaning of a word. From 

 these, and other considerations, I fliould hold it as a 

 maxim, that a lexicographer ought not to rest upon 

 the authority of particular jjafsages, taken from any 

 author, as a sufficient, or indeed as a proper proof 

 of the meaning of any word. Where he finds a dif- 

 ficulty in explaining the meaning of a word, he may 

 indeed produce a phrase in which that meaning is 

 truly adopted, not as a proof, but as an illustra- 

 tion only ; and it does not matter whether that illus- 

 tration be a phrase tlrat has been actually em- 

 ployed by a good writer, or if it be composed 

 by himself for the purpose, which, as being the 

 easiesty^ ought, perhaps, to be recommended as tlie 

 best mode of obtaining them. 



A man, to be properly qualified for writing a dic- 

 tionary, Ihould, therefore, be pofsefsed of such an ex- 

 tensive knowledge of the language in which he 

 writes, as to be able to recollect, from a wide and 

 genera) course of reading, the precise meaning cif 

 every word as it occurs, which he has stored up ia 



