"Dr Adams found him one day busy at his Dictionary, when the following dialogue ensued: ADAMS. This is a great work, Sir... How can you do this in three years? JOHNSON. Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years. Adams. But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. Johnson. Sir, thus it is: this is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."

"For the mechanical part he employed, as he told me, sixamanuenses; and let it be remembered by the natives of North-Britain, to whom he is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them were of that country.... To all these painful labourers, Johnson shewed a never-ceasing kindness."

"While the Dictionary was going forward, Johnson lived part of the time in Holborn, part in Gough-square, Fleet-street; and he had an upper room fitted up like a counting-house for the purpose, in which he gave to the copyists their several tasks. The words, partly taken from other dictionaries, and partly supplied by himself, having been first written down with spaces left between them, he delivered in writing their etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages, with a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could easily be effaced. I have seen several of them, in which that trouble had not been taken, so that they were just as when used by the copyists."

JOHNSON'S HOUuse in Gough SQUARE

No. 17 Gough Square, the house in which Johnson lived from 1748 to 1759, was bought in 1911 by Mr Cecil Harmsworth, who undertook such restoration as was necessary. The visitor will find it most easily by turning into Bolt Court, on the north side of Fleet Street, and will note with satisfaction that "almost every original feature of importance has survived."

A descriptive booklet, with a good coloured portrait, may be bought at the house, and a well-illustrated account is given in The Architectural Review for December, 1918. Carlyle's description of his visit (Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. IV) is well known and the reader may also be referred to Mr Austin Dobson's A Garret in Gough Square (Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 1st Series) and Miss Sophie Cole's novel, A London Posy.

Though these pencil-marks do not remain for us to see, the house in Gough Square still stands. The literary adventurer of to-day may behold it with something of that reverence which St John's Gate inspired in Johnson when he first came to London.

The Dictionary employed Johnson for eight years.

"Mr Andrew Millar, bookseller in the Strand, took the principal charge of conducting the publication.... When the messenger who carried the last sheet to Millar returned, Johnson asked him 'Well, what did he say?' - 'Sir (answered the messenger) he said, Thank God I have done with him.' 'I am glad (replied Johnson, with a smile) that he thanks GOD for anything."

Lord Chesterfield, to whom the "Plan" had been addressed, had taken no notice of Johnson during his years of toil. Johnson had waited in his "outward rooms" and been "repulsed from his door"-an incident which a famous picture has made familiar to many who otherwise, perhaps, would hardly have heard either of the rich nobleman or of the "uncourtly scholar."

On the eve of publication, however, Lord Chesterfield attempted to make amends by two complimentary notices in a paper called The World. This provoked Johnson to write one of the best known letters in English literature. Here is a part of it :

"Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before....

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Publick should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself."

This fine piece of snubbing, written, as Johnson said, in defensive pride, became "the talk of the town." But Johnson did not wish it to be public property. When Lord Hardwicke expressed a wish to read it, he "declined to comply with the request, saying, with a smile 'No, Sir; I have hurt the dog too much already."

"The Dictionary" says Boswell "with a Grammar and History of the English Language being now at length published, in two volumes folio, the world contemplated with wonder so stupendous a work achieved by one man."

We, too, may do the same, though we may be frightened, rather than attracted, by the sentence