face,
without making my acknowledgements to Mr. _Johnson_, whose admirable
dictionary has been of the greatest use to me in the study of our language.
It is pity he had not formed as just, and as extensive an idea of English
grammar. Perhaps this very useful work may still be reserved for his
distinguished abilities in this way."--_Priestley's Grammar, Preface_, p.
xxiii. Dr. Johnson's English Grammar is all comprised in fourteen pages,
and of course it is very deficient. The syntax he seems inclined entirely
to omit, as (he says) Wallis did, and Ben Jonson had better done; but, for
form's sake, he condescends to bestow upon it ten short lines.

33. My point here is, that the best grammarians have left much to be done
by him who may choose to labour for the further improvement of English
grammar; and that a man may well deserve comparative praise, who has not
reached perfection in a science like this. Johnson himself committed many
errors, some of which I shall hereafter expose; yet I cannot conceive that
the following judgement of his works was penned without some bias of
prejudice: "Johnson's merit ought not to be denied to him; but his
dictionary is the most imperfect and faulty, and the least valuable _of
any_[80] of his productions; and that share of merit which it possesses,
makes it by so much the more hurtful. I rejoice, however, that though the
least valuable, he found it the most profitable: for I could never read his
preface without shedding a tear. And yet it must be confessed, that his
_grammar_ and _history_ and _dictionary_ of what _he calls_ the English
language, are in all respects (except the bulk of the _latter_[81]) most
truly contemptible performances; and a reproach to the learning and
industry of a nation which could receive them with the slightest
approbation. Nearly one third of this dictionary is as much the language of
the Hottentots as of the English; and it would be no difficult matter so to
translate any one of the plainest and most popular numbers of the
_Spectator_ into the language of this dictionary, that no mere Englishman,
though well read in his own language, would he able to comprehend one
sentence of it. It appears to be a work of labour, and yet is in truth one
of the most idle performances ever offered to the public; compiled by an
author who possessed not one single requisite for the undertaking, and
(being a publication of a set of booksellers) owing its success to that
very cir