Quote: Johnson found disorder, confusion, adulterations in English without established principles or authorities

Quotation

When I took the first survey of my undertaking [a dictionary of the English language], I found our speed copious without order, and energetic without rules: wherever I turned my view there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated; choice was to be made out of boundless variety, without any established principle of selection; adulterations were to be detected, without a settled test of purity; and modes of expression to be rejected or received, without the suffrages of any writers of classical reputation on acknowledged authority.   Google-1   Google-2

Published before 1923

Related Topics

Topic: natural language as a system (43 items)
Topic: dictionary for natural language (41 items)
Topic: rules (43 items)