184 ADAM SMITH. 



to the ' Edinburgh Eeview,' of which I have spoken in 

 the * Life of Robertson/ a paper of great merit, being a 

 criticism on Johnson's Dictionary. Allowing full praise 

 to the merits of that important work, he yet very clearly 

 showed the want of strict philosophical principle with 

 which it is justly chargeable, the different senses of 

 words being rarely arranged in classes, or the particular 

 modifications of each signification under the more gen- 

 eral, and as it were leading or prevailing sense, and 

 words apparently synonymous, being very often dis- 

 tinguished with little care. He illustrates his remarks 

 by examining the words, but and humour, as given by 

 Johnson, and by giving them on his own more syste- 

 matic plan. The article is masterly in all respects, 

 and carries conviction to every attentive reader. The 

 specimen is as well executed as possible, and makes it 

 a matter of regret, not indeed that the author should 

 have confined his own labours as a lexicographer, to 

 pointing out the way instead of walking in it himself, 

 but that his plan should not have been adopted and 

 executed by others whose labour might have been 

 better spared for so useful a work. This service to 

 letters, indeed to science itself, still remains to be 

 rendered, and if individuals should be scared from so 

 toilsome an undertaking, it seems well suited to the 

 joint exertions of some literary society. The zeal and 

 activity of Voltaire, it may be mentioned, broke out 

 almost on his death-bed, in persuading his colleagues 

 of the Academy to accomplish a work of this kind, in 

 some sort fellow to the one I speak of; for it was to 

 remodel their Dictionary, giving the historical progress 

 of the meaning attached to the words, with quotations 

 from contemporary writers, and each Academician was 

 to have taken a letter ; he had begun himself to write 

 upon the letter A, with his wonted industry, when that 

 hand arrested him, to which the laborious and the idle 

 alike must submit, closing his long and brilliant career. 

 Dr. Smith's other paper in the Review is a letter to 



