Nine Years for A and B By Christopher Ricks Dr. Johnson was the greatest man who made a dictionary. James A.H. Murray was the man who made the greatest
dictionary: From 1879 to 1915, when he died, he devoted his life to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Dr. Johnson had earned the right, as we have not,
to call the lexicographer "a harmless drudge." For Johnson knew not only that a great deal more than drudgery is involved, but also that the amount of drudgery in
the making of a 'dictionary is simply unimaginable. Even the dictionary maker fortunately can't make it real to himself in advance. So the lexicographer —
even a profoundly thoughtful and experienced one like James Murray — will grasp at the notion that the letter A is typical, so that he can really calculate,
now that he has done A, how long are the vistas ahead. And then, all too soon, he is having to admit, not only that A isn't typical (apparently it has lots of
classically derived words, and these don't have a great many senses), but that the whole idea of a typical letter is a will-o'-the-wisp. Or again, the lexicographer estimates the amount of time and effort involved in chasing up rare words or scientific terms and then finds that the hardest
words are the ones that might seem easiest. The longest entry in the Oxford English Dic- tionary is for that simple slippery little word set, and Murray was plunged
into black despair by "the terrible word Black and its derivatives," The dictionary maker runs against time. He has to, because unless he gets a move on he will fall
further and further behind, while the dictionary is taking longer to record linguistic events than they take to happen. For another thing, a gigantic enterprise like the
O.E.D. needs to be published in parts, to keep up the spirits of all concerned. But people won't buy it unless there is some chance of their still being alive when it
finally reaches its destined Z. What goes for subscribers goes, too, for the publishers, who do hope for some return on, or at least of, their money. So there have
to be schedules and anxiety and resentment and nagging, in this race against time, time whose pace never falters. "The Triple Nightmare: Space, Time, and Money"
— that is the title of a central chapter m this touching, honest, courteous and anecdotally vivid life of James Murray by his granddaughter K.M. Elisabeth Murray.
Mur- ray believed that providence had provided him with this great opportunity. His religious faith, his patriotism, his will power, his exceptionally wide range of
scholarly gifts, his coordinating powers all converged upon this responsibility entrusted to him. ,, ... - Would he have acknowledged that one of the things
providence did for him was mercifully to withhold a full sense of the task that was never to end for him? The unique importance of "the Big Dictionary" he never
un- derestimated, but he did repeatedly underestimate its final magnitude: over 16,000 pages—and each page is large, packed and precise—
of which Murray personally edited nearly half. If. a providential whisper had told Murray at that moment a hundred years ago (when at the age of 40 he agreed to
edit the dictionary) that nine years after the work had started only the letters .A.and B would have been published, and that he would die at the age of 78 without
having quite reached the end of his endeavor, would he ever have set out on such a life work? n But the answer, of course, is yes. James Murray was born in
Scotland in 1837, the son of a village tailor. He went to a parish school, but he left at 14 and he educated himself with pertinacity. He loved knowledge and he loved
to impart it. He became a schoolmaster; he learned language after language and was alive to geology, archeology and phonetics, as well as to local politics. He had to
leave Scotland because of the illness of his first wife, and he became a bank clerk in London. By sheer energy of scholarship, and without benefit of any university
education, he made himself in- dispensable to the other remarkable philologists .of his day. He returned to school-teaching and lived a 72-hour day for the rest of his life. For the invitation to edit what became the O.E.D. was one that he could not refuse. 61, At first he combined it with his school work;
later- he moved to Oxford and dedicated himself to building the best sort of monument — best in that it was not a monument to himself, and best in that it was
not a monument to something dead but rather to something living: the English language. - Unusual in its etymological exactitude, in its strength and
delicacy of definition and of subdivision as each word lives and branches, it was more than unusual — it was unique — in the range, precision and organization
of its illustrative quotations. A great band of instructed volun- teers culled these quotations; subeditors winnowed them; and Murray in his "Scriptorium" shaped
them and did every other kind of work that could make the dictionary as good as humanly possible. He beavered and he badg- ered. He had to chase wild geese:
he asked Robert Louis Stevenson what brean meant in a book of his, and found out that it was a misprint for ocean. He was puz- zled by a plural noun alliterates
in an essay by James Russell Lowell, and found that it, too, was a misprint, this time for the apt word illiterates.
He took pride in what he was doing, and he was not proud of himself. He didn't want a biography: "I am a nobody — if you have anything to say about the Dic-
tionary, there it is at your will — but treat me as a solar myth, or an echo, or an irrational quantity, or ignore me altogether." But he is unignorable, an Eminent
Victo- rian such as we now realize is not to be sneered at. The uneventful dignity of his life makes for a biography which 82 ' It would be odd
to be thrilled by and which it would be insensitive not to be stirred by. "The work is greater than I, or any worker," he said when he was contemplat- ing resignation
because of the ceaseless pressure on him to skimp the work. Only a great man would speak so, or would continue with such simple sincerity and self- abnegation
: "and while I will never desert it, I will never stand in the way of its better or more speedy achieve- ment, if that seems attainable." , Though it was a painful
and arduous life, it was not a grim one. No life can be grim in which a man so thoroughly, and with such justified satisfaction, knows himself in that he knows
what he can work at. Murray, like his friends and colleagues, felt within the present a 'profound community which was dependent not only upon a community
with the past (from which it inherited its whole language of thinking, feeling and pledging), but also upon a community with the future, that future which will
inherit. It is their children, and the children of their children, for whom they work, and they never stop saying so. And it is one of the children of one of Mur-
ray's children who has now written this life of the man who said when he appealed for volunteers: "If you de- sire no credit and feel no interest in helping my work
I can do without you, weep not for me, weep for yourselves and your children." , — From The New Yorfc Times Book Review, October 30, 1977 83 About
the Author Christopher Ricks is a -/British literary critic. The present text is his review of Caught in the Web of Words, a biography of James A. H. Murray by. his granddaughter K.. M. Elisabeth
Murray. . • Notes and Commentary 1. Dr. Johnson — Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was one of the most important 18th-century English writers. His Dic- tionary appeared in 1755. It was the most famous Eng- lish dictionary before Webster, and perhaps the best before the Oxford
English Dictionary. . .. • - .
2. The Oxford English Dictionary — The largest Dictionary of the English language that has ever been published. The 0. E. D.. consists of 12 volumes and
contains over 400,000 words. Its essential feature is what we often refer to as the historical method. The meaning and form of each word in the dictionary
are traced from their , . earliest appearance on the basis of an immense number of quotations collected by more than 800 volunteer read- ers., James
Murray edited nearly half of the Dictionary, the other scholars responsible for the rest of the work being Henry Bradley, Sir William Craigie and Dr. C. T. '
Onions. . • '.'•••:'{. ..,..' ... - .
3. "a harmless, drudge" — In Dr. Johnson's Dictionary the 84 word lexicographer is defined as "a writer.of dictionaries) . a harmless drudge". .
4. classically derived words — Words of Greek or Latin s origin. .
5. the "dictionary is taking longer to record linguistic events than they take to happen—New words and ex- pressions constantly find their way into speech while the dictionary requires much longer time to record these linguistic phenomena. -
6. He had to leave Scotland—His first wife was seriously ill and the doctor advised her to move south where the climate might suit her better. So he went to London with her. . .
7. other remarkable philologists, of his day—Henry Sweet, -... Frederick, J. Furnivall, and some others.
8. "Scriptorium"—An iron shed which Murray set*up in ' the garden of his house. The shed was lined with pigeonholes for word-slips.
9. He beavered — Beavers are supposed to be very hard- working, hence the expressions "an eager beaver" and ['to work like a beaver". The word is used here as a '.''. verb, meaning "work hard". •
10. He badgered — The badger is a kind of burrowing ani- mal. "He badgered" means he went deeply into his sub- ject.
11. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)—A famous English writer known for his novels Treasure Island, The Black Arrow, etc., and poems written for children.. . • 85
12. James Russell Lowell (1819-91)—An American poet and essayist.
13. an Eminent Victorian—Queen Victoria reigned over England from 1837 to 1901. This period is often called the Victorian Age, and an important person of the period a Victorian.
Here the two words Eminent Victorian are capitalized. Apparently the writer is referring to Emi- nent Victorians, a collection of biographies written by Lytton
Strachey. 14. Murray . . . felt within the present a profound com- munity. . . — He felt that linguistically or culturally there was something profound which
the present had in common with both the past and the future. 15. from which it inherited its whole language of thinking, feeling and pledging. The present
inherited from the past the entire language expressive of man's thinking, feeling and undertaking. 16. that future which will inherit—
That future (repeated for the sake of emphasis) which will inherit from the present. Exercises L Questions A 1. How did Dr. Johnson define the word
lexicographer? What did he mean?