Page:Evolution of English Lexicography.djvu/47

 44 his work so-called 'etymologies' of this sort. But Etymology is simply Word-history, and Word-history, like all other history, is a record of the facts which did happen, not a fabric of conjectures as to what may have happened. In the later editions of Webster, these 'derivations' have been cleared out en masse, and the etymology placed in the hands of men abreast of the science of the time; and the last edition of Webster, the International, is perhaps the best of one-volume dictionaries.

Richardson started on a new track altogether. Observing how much light was shed on the meaning of words by Johnson's quotations, he was impressed with the notion that, in a dictionary, definitions are unnecessary, that quotations alone are sufficient; and he proceeded to carry this into effect by making a dictionary without definitions or explanations of meaning, or at least with the merest rudiments of them, but illustrating each group of words by a large series of quotations. In the collection of these he displayed immense research. Going far beyond the limits of Dr. Johnson, he quoted from authors back to the year 1300, and probably for the first time made Chaucer and Gower and Piers Ploughman living names to many readers. And his special notion was quite correct in theory. Quotations will tell the full meaning of a word, if one has enough of them; but it takes a great many to be enough, and it takes a reader a long time to read and weigh all the quotations, and to deduce from them the meanings which might be put before him in a line or two.