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Aetat. 38] noble consciousness of his own abilities, which enabled him to go on with undaunted spirit. Dr. Adams found him one day busy at his Dictionary, when the following dialogue ensued. ' This is a great work, Sir. How are you to get all the etymologies? Why, Sir, here is a shelf with Junius, and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welch gentleman who has published a collection of Welch proverbs, who will help me with the Welch. But, Sir, how can you do this in three years? Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years. But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. 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.' With so much ease and pleasantry could he talk of that prodigious labour which he had undertaken to execute. The publick has had, from another pen, a long detail of Rh