JOHNSON S DICTIONARY OF MODERN GARDENING. 
475 
through hundreds of books not often attain- 
able by the majority of amateur and profes- 
sional gardeners, and whoever will take the 
trouble to select the best from all these unattain- 
able sources, and give it us in a condensed and 
readable form, does great service ; but it too 
often happens that they do also a great deal 
of injustice (possibly without intending it); 
but as in all works of this kind the best autho- 
rities are professed to have been consulted, 
it must be evident that a serious injustice 
is effected in every instance in which any 
competent authority has been purposely omit- 
ted ; in every case where such authorities 
have not been fully and fairly acknowledged ; 
and in every instance in which the strictest 
impartiality has not been most rigidly obser- 
ved ; — therefore, authors who are so largely 
indebted to the writings of others as are the 
compilers of Dictionaries and Cyclopaedias, 
cannot be too particular in such matters. 
Mr. Johnson has, certainly, very fully 
acknowledged those authorities from which he 
has quoted, and, therefore, cannot be charged 
with any injustice on that account; not so, 
however, we regret to find, with the other 
points to which we have referred : for in the 
very preface he evinces an objectionable dis- 
position to partiality, by lavishing his praises 
on a few favourite works, while others with 
which he is equally well acquainted, and to 
which he is but little less indebted, are alto- 
gether unnoticed. As an instance of this, we 
need only take the gardening newspapers, and 
of these it will be observed, that the Gar- 
dener's Chronicle, and the United Gardener's 
and Land Steward's Journal, are thus 
brought prominently into notice ; while the 
Gardener's Gazette, a journal established sis 
years before the one, and three years before 
the other, is not even named. That this could 
not have occurred from the author's having 
any doubt of its value as a practical work, 
must be evident from his perfect knowledge 
of the individual who established, and (with 
but little intermission) has ever since edited 
that journal, and of whom Mr. Johnson thus 
speaks : 
Page 103, " Mr. Glenny, one of our best 
judges of florists' flowers," &c. 
Page 169, "The soil, says Mr. Glenny, 
and other first-rate authorities," &c. 
Page 537, " Upon this point the same ex- 
cellent authority," &c. 
Page 673, " The best practical information 
is given by Mr. Glenny," &c. 
The very fact of a journal known to have 
been established and conducted by this person 
being wholly neglected, while all others of the 
game class are prominently noticed, has very 
much the appearance of withholding from the 
public the knowledge that such paper exists, 
or, in other words, it has all the appearance of 
a disposition on the part of the writer to con- 
vey to his readers the information that there 
is a Gardener's Chronicle, and a Gardener's 
Journal — and to suppress the fact that there 
is also the first Gardening Newspaper that 
was established, the Gardeners' Gazette. If 
we turn from the newspapers to the magazines, 
we find that the Horticidtural Journal, 
another work established and edited by the 
same author, is not once named, although 
many of the quotations from other journals 
were originally published in that work. Many 
instances of this kind we could point out, but 
that our limits will not admit of many such 
examples; and, therefore, we will confine our- 
selves exclusively to those subjects on which 
Mr. Johnson himself states, (p. 673,) "the best 
practical information is given by Mr. Glenny," 
and where, if any where, we should have 
expected to have found this authority con- 
sulted — but no ! even here, as far as we have 
been able to discover, it appears that in almost 
every instance in which this author's writings 
have been copied or re-written into other works, 
Mr. Johnson has quoted the very articles from 
those works, instead of from the original; 
so much so, indeed, that even " The Pro- 
perties of Flowers," a series of papers so 
exclusively his own, are in no single in- 
stance quoted from his works, or with his 
name, if they could be found transcribed into 
any other works ; and accordingly Mr. Johnson 
has given the Properties of the Pansy, the 
Auricula, the Carnation, the Polyanthus, the 
Tulip, &c. &c. from the Gardener's Chronicle, 
notwithstanding every one of them were 
kneftvn to have originated with this writer, 
and to have been published years before in the 
several works with which he was connected. 
We entirely acquit Mr. Johnson of the 
wilful intention of perpetrating an injustice 
in this or any other matter ; we respect him 
as a writer, and we only regret that he has 
allowed a spirit of favouritism to so far warp 
his judgment as to influence his selection of 
authorities, for, most assuredly, his work has 
suffered in consequence. As an instance of this, 
we would observe that the Fuchsia, a plant 
now enjoying everybody's attention, and of 
which, therefore, of all others, the criterion of % 
a good flower was necessary, is given without 
that very desirable information : while the 
Dahlia, the Pelargonium, and the Kose, are 
but very imperfectly described. 
Now, these have all been so fully and so 
admirably defined, most particularly all the 
various classes of the Kose, that if our author 
had only kept faith with his preface, and 
'•((insulted the best living authorities," nay, 
if he had only consulted a good florist, he 
would have been directed to the right source, 
