Samuel Johnson Dictionary Maker (A Lexicographer’s Life)

Among the names of the greatest literary minds of all time towers Dr. Samuel Johnson. Not only did he produce thousands of writings, ghost writings, sermons, and literary pieces, he also wrote the Dictionary of the English Language in the 18th century – at a time when such a notion might have even been considered a little absurd.

The question you should be asking yourself is: how does one WRITE a dictionary? Let that sink in for a moment, Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote an entire dictionary! Although it wasn’t the first dictionary ever, it was the first of its kind and a monument to our English language and human knowledge. There is no overstating this incredible feat!

Linguistic Background

As a linguist I’ve taken several Lexicography classes. Lexicography is the art and science of creating dictionaries and let me tell you when you are tasked with the goal of writing even the simplest of definitions that are ‘airtight,’ believe me it’s not as easy as it sounds!

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary was published in 1755, it wouldn’t be until over a century later, in the 1880s, that James Murray, in very unusual circumstances, would create the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). His was a tale of madness, and along with a convicted ex-Civil War American in London, it’s an incredibly convoluted story!

For comparison, we also have Noah Webster, an American lexicographer and dictionary maker who published his first dictionary in 1806: A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language.

Noah Webster’s life is an amazing tale which is also interwoven with our American Revolution; for his accomplishments, both politically and linguistically, he should stand as one of our Founding Fathers in my opinion. For a great read on the life and contributions of Noah Webster, I’d recommend “The Forgotten Founding Father” by Joshua Kendall.

After the rights to Webster’s dictionary became the property of the Merriam family (posthumously), his work became what we now know as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. In my opinion it’s an affront, as Webster’s name should come first!

Extreme Personality

Dr. Samuel Johnson was a case study in conflicting personalities. On the one hand he was expeditious in his work, on the other hand caustic and derisive with his words. As in all “artistic” types, those were his extremes; this was not always the case for Dr. Johnson as he was also kind to the poor and a loving and doting husband, when it occasioned him.

We find his extremes come to head in the pressures of life. When confronted about his physical maladies by childhood friends or Londoners of ‘better’ standing, it is said that Samuel Johnson was so witty that he could hit you with a retort to an insult that would leave you stinging for the rest of your life!

Even luminaries like Adam Smith and Alexander Pope wrote about Samuel Johnson’s wit and sarcasm. They also noted that he was among the preeminent scholars of his age. Johnson’s friend and biographer James Boswell even collected and catalogued his insults as a part of his social repartee!

In his book “Samuel Johnson: The Struggle,” author Jefferey Meyers aptly encapsulates the everyday life anguish that Johnson carried around in its subtitle: the struggle. It’s spot on.

What was the source of that struggle? Well, to put it plainly he was classically and interminably ENGLISH. Although he struggled with many personal demons, he also butted heads with what I would call an extreme version of writer’s block:

Johnson’s inability to complete a piece of writing made him feel that time was running out and often led to thoughts of futility and death.

Meyers 2008: 110-11

Samuel Johnson the dictionary maker was enthralled by learning. He often said that the best tool in the making of his Dictionary was simply reading. However, Johnson never just simply read, he was a voracious reader! From what historical sources tell us, Johnson’s personality was dominated by books and reading; his propensity to learn was almost unequaled in his day.

Dr. Johnson (although he disliked that sobriquet) was also always inclined to demonstrate his superior intellect. According to author Jeffrey Meyers, this came from his father’s ineptitude in business, their lower class birth, the fact that his mother’s family looked down on the Johnsons, as well as the physical maladies that Samuel Johnson had acquired from a very rough childbirth in Lichfield, England.

In that respect, I think Samuel Johnson’s story and temperament are relatable to many of us today. Although we would never reveal our most inner secrets or put our troubled backgrounds on display as such, biographical books about Dr Johnson are quite revealing and actually make him quite empathetic to us in the struggles that he not only endured, but also overcame.

There is a lesson in his life for perseverance and a dogged, yet humble, belief in oneself!

Samuel Johnson the Dictionary

Samuel Johnson took nine years to write his Dictionary, although he was only paid for 3 years of work. Johnson was commissioned and began crafting definitions in 1746 and did not finish until 1754. Although he had a small team of workers who took scraps of notes and compiled them for him, the work and brainpower of the Dictionary of the English Language was basically all Samuel Johnson!

In June 1746 Johnson signed the contract, for a fee of £1,575, and rather optimistically agreed to complete the project in three years.

Meyers 2008: 158

Although Johnson’s contract may have initially gotten the best of him, his residuals and reputation because of the Dictionary increased dramatically over time. Finally published on April 15th, 1755, it contained over 40,000 words, 116,000 quotations, 2,500 pages, and was published in 2 large folio volumes.

The introductory sales price to the Dictionary of the English Language was £4.50, in 1755 dollars. That’s about £1,000 in 2019 pounds sterling, or about $1,300 USD. In the same vein, if Samuel Johnson got paid (or underpaid) £1,575 for his project, that’s the equivalent of over £300,000 today! That’s roughly $401,000 in 2019 US currency. (All figures are inflation-adjusted). Still no paltry sum!

To accomplish his almost Herculean task Johnson hired six apprentices to work under him and do his bidding, all of whom got paid about £2 a week. These 6 junior lexicographers / scribes were:

• Alexander Macbean
• William Macbean (brothers)
• Robert Shiels
• Francis Stewart
• Mr. Maitland
• V. J. Peyton

A major functional difference between Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary and other previous dictionaries was that Johnson’s was “descriptive, not prescriptive” (Meyers 2008: 158). To a modern-day linguist, this means everything!

‘PRESCRIPTIVISM’ is stating the way things should be while ‘DESCRIPTIVISM’ is stating the way things are or appear to be. Descriptivism is scientific observation, ‘describing’ the universe.

Likewise with words, a dictionary is tasked to describe a language in terms of the usage of its words and not overlay value judgements as to their “correct” or “incorrect” usage. This naturally meant that rude words were also included as a matter of course.

Although Johnson was not entirely immune to prescriptivism, his Dictionary provided a leap forward in the art and craft of lexicography. What made his work stand out from other dictionaries of the time, some of which contained more words, was that it quoted extensively from literary sources.

Johnson had deliberately excluded many obsolete and foreign terms as well as most scientific terms, and did not include names. The Scott-Bailey was designed to appeal to common people who wanted a basic tool without frills, as distinguished from the literary appeal of Johnson’s work, with its extended quotations from great writers of past and present.

Landau 1996: 52

The ultimate and lasting legacy of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language was that it brought into the light a language which was still considered somewhat inferior in the 18th century. As strange as it sounds, English was not held in high regard in comparison to established literary traditions such as German and French. Samuel Johnson was a staunch Anglophile.

Johnson almost single-handedly elevated English as a ‘proper’ language of culture and expressiveness by virtue of the fact that his dictionary not only clearly defined its terms, but also linked those terms to the great writers, philosophers, and poets of England.

The Dictionary was published on 15 April 1755, available in two folio volumes running to more than 2,500 pages in two columns at a price of £4. 10s. Strahan printed 2,000 copies. The volumes weighed twenty pounds, unwieldy for just about everyone, ‘proud in its prodigious bulk,’ as he boasted to Thomas Warton.

Martin 2009: 264

Johnson’s Dictionary included 116,000 quotations. The bulk of those quotations not only came from preexisting sources, but also his social circle!

Ambivalent Social Circle

Samuel Johnson ran around with a group of perpetually ambivalent friends. They were “ambivalent” because on the one hand they all got on as intellectual equals who thrived off of each other’s company, yet at the same time could deeply despise one another which often led to physical altercations.

Among Johnson’s closest friends were: Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, James Boswell, John Taylor, Giuseppe Baretti, and David Garrick.

There is no doubt that his warmest and closest male friend was Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) . . . He simply regarded Reynolds as a ‘great man.’ Reynolds maintained that Johnson ‘formed my mind’ and ‘brushed off from it a deal of rubbish’

Martin 2009: 284

The thing that is worth noting about the social life of Samuel Johnson is that he was not only somewhat itinerant during his life but he was also a perpetual night owl.

Often staying up well into the wee hours of the night, he enjoyed the company of other thinkers and philosophers as they would famously walk the very dangerous streets of London together. Although their activities were mostly conversational, he and his friends were definitely known to have engaged in the seedier side of what London had to offer.

Absent from Samuel’s social circle was his wife Elizabeth. What this means is that the Johnsons did not entertain from their house in Lichfield as a family, rather, wife was at home and Samuel was off in London writing and socializing.

Elizabeth Johnson was born Elizabeth Jervis in 1689 and was known by her nickname Tetty, which was a Midland’s variant of “Lizzie.” However, when Samuel Johnson met Tetty she was known as Elizabeth “Tetty” Porter, as she was previously married and then widowed. The two would marry in 1735 – Johnson was 25, Tetty was 46.

Despite their separation, Johnson was a man about town. Social interaction kept him going and intellectual stimulation drove him forward. If you analyze the list of people that hung around with Johnson they were all “literary” in some way, shape, or form. They were either writers, stage performers, or connected to Samuel as a ghost writer – it’s a little-known fact that he wrote volumes of sermons, speeches, introductions, manuscripts, poems for other people! Samuel Johnson’s output was absolutely prolific and startlingly diverse.

In contrast, Johnson the daily man was a mess. He definitely had an artistic temperament in that he stayed up really late, never woke up on time, was constantly distracted, and had major bouts of procrastination. However, once Johnson got into the groove he was laser-focused on his work and could write up to 5 pages an hour for hours on end!

Think about it, I didn’t say type, I said WRITE. For the mid 18th century, that’s an almost unheard of feat of speed. Not only that, what he wrote by hand did not need correction, it came out flawless the first time. Not me, I think I retyped this paragraph at least 5 times!

Samuel Johnson Satire

My very first impression of Samuel Johnson came as a child watching one of my favourite TV shows: BLACKADDER. Starring the always irreverent Rowan Atkinson, season 3 (series 3) aired an episode entitled “Ink and Incapability” which parodied the efforts of Samuel Johnson to acquire patronage from the inept prince played by Hugh Laurie. Johnson is played by the famous British actor Robbie Coltrane.

You can watch the full episode below! I’m still in stitches every time I watch this!

Sources

Of all the sources on the life of Samuel Johnson I’ve listed below, if you are looking for a great book to read on his life, then I would definitely recommend Peter Martin’s “Samuel Johnson: A Biography.” It is wonderfully written and the most detailed account of his life that I have read.

Martin’s book paints a very heartfelt portrait of Johnson the man; it also unlocks his labors in creating his Dictionary much more than Meyers. In fact, I would NOT recommend reading Meyers on this subject as he is a dreadful writer and barely even mentions the dictionary in any aspect of his life. I found Peter Martin’s book while browsing through Half Price Books in Texas so you know it’s a winner!

• Martin, Peter. 2009. Samuel Johnson: A Biography. London: Phoenix.
• Meyers, Jeffrey. 2008. Samuel Johnson: The Struggle. New York: Basic Books.
• Landau, Sidney L. 1996. Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Boswell, James. 2008. The Life of Samuel Johnson. New York: Penguin Classics. [Amazon link]
• Read the original Dictionary of the English Language online

Watch/Listen to this Samuel Johnson article on YouTube!

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