Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/80

76 was not planned until the scheme for an edition of Shakespeare had broken down. It was necessary for Johnson, if he was to raise himself above the crowd of venal writers, to inscribe his name on some large monument of scholarship. Shakespeare was his first choice; when, perhaps through the timidity of the booksellers, that failed him, he turned his attention to Shakespeare’s language, and in 1747 issued the Plan for a Dictionary, which he addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield.

The Dictionary was finished in 1755, and Johnson, compelled to find some new means of livelihood, returned to Shakespeare. Warburton’s edition had in the meantime been added to the list of his rivals, but his own confidence had increased and his fame was established. The Proposals for Printing the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare, which he issued in 1756, are magnificent in their range and discernment. The whole duty of a Shakespearian commentator and critic is here, for the first time, expounded. The complete collation of the early editions; the tracing of Shakespeare’s knowledge to its sources; the elucidation of obscurities by a careful study of the language and customs of Shakespeare’s time; the comparison of Shakespeare’s work with that of other great poets, ancient and modern—all this and more is promised in the Proposals. He seems to have hoped that his edition would be final, and in order to give it that character he promised to reprint all that seemed valuable in the notes of earlier commentators. The whole project breathes that warm air of imagination in which authors design extensive and laborious works. It is possible, but not likely, that he set to work at