tionary did not exist it would have to be invented;
that its justification is its indispensableness. Not the least of its
advantages is that it makes legitimate the use of diagrams and pictorial
illustrations, which, if properly selected and executed, are often
valuable aids to definition.

On its practical side the advance in lexicography has consisted in the
elaboration of methods long in use rather than in the invention of new
ones. The only way to collect the data upon which the vocabulary, the
definitions and the history are to be based is, of course, to search for
them in the written monuments of the language, as all lexicographers who
have not merely borrowed from their predecessors have done. But the
wider scope and special aims of the new lexicography demand that the
investigation shall be vastly more comprehensive, systematic and
precise. It is necessary, in brief, that, as far as may be possible, the
literature (of all kinds) of every period of the language shall be
examined systematically, in order that all the words, and senses and
forms of words, which have existed during any period may be found, and
that enough excerpts (carefully verified, credited and dated) to cover
all the essential facts shall be made. The books, pamphlets, journals,
newspapers, and so on which must thus be searched will be numbered by
thousands, and the quotations selected may (as in the case of the Oxford
_New English Dictionary_) be counted by millions. This task is beyond
the powers of any one man, even though he be a Johnson, or a Littre or a
Grimm, and it is now assigned to a corps of readers whose number is
limited only by the ability of the editor to obtain such assistance. The
modern method of editing the material thus accumulated--the actual work
of compilation--also is characterized by the application of the
principle of the division of labour. Johnson boasted that his dictionary
was written with but little assistance from the learned, and the same
was in large measure true of that of Littre. Such attempts on the part
of one man to write practically the whole of a general dictionary are no
longer possible, not merely because of the vast labour and philological
research necessitated by modern aims, but more especially because the
immense development of the vocabulary of the special sciences renders
indispensable the assistance, in the work of definition, of persons who
are expert in those sciences. The tendency, accordingly,