The MagazineIn 1747, eight years before the publication of his pioneering dictionary, Samuel Johnson wrote that his “chief intent” in compiling his great work was “to preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of the English idiom,” which he characterized as “the exact and pure idea of a grammatical dictionary.” But he also recognized that “in lexicography, as in other arts, naked science is too delicate for the purposes of life.” And it followed from this, “The value of a work must be estimated by its use.” Dictionaries had to present the language as it was, not merely as it should be: “It is not enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless at the same time it instructs the learner.”  James Murray in the Scriptorium James Murray (1837-1915), the self-taught Scot who became the founding editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, would reaffirm that principle, concurring with the Philological Society that “the literary merit or demerit of any particular writer, like the comparative elegance or inelegance of any given word, is a subject on which the Lexicographer is bound to be almost indifferent.” At the same time, he devoted himself for over 30 years to capturing the dynamic richness of the language. In 1879, he equipped his famous Scriptorium in North Oxford with over a thousand pigeonholes to store the alphabetical slips of readers and assistants from which he compiled the dictionary’s definitions and quotations. And although he did not live to see the completion of the 10-volume New English Dictionary in 1928 (which would become the 12-volume OED in 1933), Murray’s vision has always animated the evolving character of this most authoritative, protean dictionary. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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