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The great book's weaknesses seemed destined to outlive its merits. By modern standards Johnson knew too little of early English to be a thorough etymologist, and as a grammarian he failed because he believed that "the syntax of this language is too inconstant to be reduced to rules." He defined both leeward and windward as "towards the wind," thought that pastern meant "the knee of an horse." Some of his other definitions were jawbreakers. A cough, said he, is "a convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity," and a network is "anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections." Though he hated the verbs to bang, to coax, and to cajole, he seemed to have an inordinate fondness for such polysyllabic wonders as ballotation (voting), balneation (bathing), and campaniform (to describe bell-shaped).
Longevity y. Immortality. In spite of these deficiencies, Johnson's achievement was unique. Though he was not a great innovator, he used the best techniques of his time to produce a dictionary unsurpassed for more than a century. In Britain, the book became the model for a slew of supplements. The Germans made it a basis for their own German-English dictionaries, and Voltaire urged the French Academy to follow Johnson's example. Though Johnson himself realized that he could never fix the language, he achieved another goal: to keep it as pure as possible and to give "longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be immortal."
The greatest of all one-man English dictionaries, it was also a highly personal one, filled with Johnsonian humor. Oats, said he, are "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"; a lexicographer is "a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the significance of words." How great a drudge was Johnson? "I knew very well what I was undertaking," he told Boswell years later, "and very well how to do it,—and have done it very well." After 200 years, Johnson's verdict on Johnson still holds good.