William Pietri wrote: Out of curiosity, how does the three volume edition measure up? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 8:09 AM, William Pietri &lt;william(a)scissor.com&gt; wrote: they were up against." I think nothing surpasses the preface statement to Samuel Johnson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson>'s A Dictionary of the English Language 1775, which was a remarkable (and solo) attempt to make a complete dictionary. I think it rings true for the efforts we make on-wiki today - still "chasing the sun": "...the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pioneer of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths of Learning and Genius, who press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few…. When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and ransack, the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind… But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. I soon found that it is too late to look for instruments, when the work calls for execution, and that whatever abilities I had brought to my task, with those I must finally perform it. To deliberate whenever I doubted, to enquire whenever I was ignorant, would have protracted the undertaking without end, and, perhaps, without much improvement; for I did not find by my first experiments, that what I had not of my own was easily to be obtained: I saw that one enquiry only gave occasion to another, that book referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to pursue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them." Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language 1775 -Liam [[witty lama]] wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata