Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1905, Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was the dictionary of preference.  Born in Staffordshire, England, in 1709, Johnson was the son of a bookseller.  Samuel read voraciously in his father's shop.  About dictionaries he said, "Dictionaries are like watches.  The worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true."

In 1747 he issued a prospectus of a Dictionary of the English Language, which was to take him eight years to complete.  His great dictionary appeared in 1755, which "gave rise to a celebrated letter in which Johnson disdained an offer of patronage from Lord Chesterfield.  Johnson was awarded an honorary degree at Oxford, but he had to continue literary hack-work to earn a living."

 A few memorable definitions and quotations from Johnson:

Lexicographer.  A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

Network.  Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

"Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place."

"I'll come no more behind your scenes, David; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities." (Said to theatrical impresario David Garrick.)

"Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures."

~ CHAMBERS Biographical Dictionary, Editor Una McGovern,  Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd.,7th ed., 2002 with contribution from Lawrence Miller who refers to Johnson as, "The Great Bear, the Ursa Major who growls and shambles and towers over the eighteenth-century English literary world."  Thank you, Laurie.