INTRODUCTION

containing just over 10,000 quotations and proverbs, this dictionary is to all intents and purposes an entirely new compilation. That, of course, is not to deny its debt to other dictionaries, including its predecessor in Everyman’s Library. But fashions change in quotation as in everything else, and by modern standards the dictionaries of a past generation seem ill-proportioned. For example, the previous Everyman’s Dictionary of Quotations allotted over 200 entries to Byron, and over 70 to Young (of Night Thoughts fame), while Browning had only seven, and Kipling only ten.

It has been the editor’s aim to readjust the balance by giving less space to old-fashioned authors and more to those now popular. The net has also been cast wider, for extracts are given from nearly a thousand authors — about double the number that appeared in this volume’s predecessor. The newcomers are by no means all modern, for they include — to take a few names at random — Aubrey, Jane Austen, Bismarck, Beau Brummell, Catullus, Clough, De Quincey, Evelyn, Kenneth Grahame, Hogg, Lang, Lear, Luther, Maeterlinck, Marryat, Nelson, Patmore, Sallust, Spooner, Traherne, Queen Victoria, Artemus Ward, Xenophon, and Zola.


VARIETY OF CONTENTS.

The quotations are of the most varied kind. There are famous sayings, from Lord Acton’s ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ to Zamoyski’s ‘The king reigns, but does not govern’; the greatest lines and passages of the best-known poems are quoted, from Paradise Lost (which provides 121 extracts) to Mary had a little Lamb, and including such old forgotten favourites as Somebody’s Darling and ‘I have no pain, dear mother, now’; solitary tags like ‘The villain still pursued her’ or ‘It’s a long time between drinks’ are given a local habitation and a name; and for the more frivolous there is a small but select collection of limericks in the Anonymous section.

Among the newcomers, perhaps the most interesting are the extracts from Mr. Churchill’s war speeches, where the most famous of his phrases are given with context and date—‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat’; ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’; ‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job’; ‘Some chicken; some neck.’ Readers who have a weakness for detective fiction may find the Holmesiana worthy of study—‘You see, but you do not observe’; ‘The curious incident of the dog’; ‘You know my methods’; ‘"Elementary," said he.’


TWO INNOVATIONS.

In the setting-out of the quotations there are two innovations which it is hoped will add to the usefulness of the volume. The first is the indication of the calling and nationality of each author. In most dictionaries of quotations the only clue to an author’s identity is the date, and even well-informed readers may be at a loss with some of the less-known British or American names.

The second innovation is the giving of day and month, as well as year,', of each author’s birth and death. This, it is hoped, will be helpful to journalists and others who want the exact date for centenary celebrations and similar purposes. All dates have been checked and rechecked, and if they are found at variance with those of any other work of reference, it should be remembered that dates are sometimes in dispute.


ORDER AND ARRANGEMENT.

The arrangement of the authors is alphabetical, as before, a single list bing used and foreign authors put in their place among English ones. The nane under which each is listed is the one most commonly used. For instance, qiotations from Alice in Wonderland are give under ‘Lewis Carroll,’ to which Here is a cross-reference from the author’s real name, C. L. Dodgson. Similarb, Latin authors are given under their familiar anglicised names, with the Latin form in brackets, e.g. ‘Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus).’ Quotations of coubtful authorship are placed at the end and grouped according to literary forms Within each author, the arrangement of the quotations is as far as possible chronological. The works of Shakespeare, however, appear in alphabetical order. In the case of the Bible the usual order of the books has been followed.


ALLOTMENT OF SPACE.

In allotting space among the different authors, the editor has tried to hold a just balance and to avoid favouritism of any kind. It is instructive to see how the numbers work out, though it must always be borne in mind that the ‘quotability’ of an author is not a reliable index of his greatness, and that it is not necessarily the finest passages that have become the most familiar. Shakespeare, of course, has the lion’s share, with nearly 1,300 entries; indeed, the play of Hamlet alone, with 180 entries, supplies more quotations than any other single author except Milton, who has just over 250, though the Bible exceeds this with 567. Pope comes third of the authors, with over 150 entries, and Tennyson fourth, a little behind him. Then there is a big gap till we come to Browning and Wordsworth, both about 90. Johnson, Byron, and Kipling have just over 80, and Burns just under. Dickens has 70 and Walter Scott 60, with Dryden in between. Coleridge, Cowper, Gilbert, and Goldsmith are all in the fifties. Shelley, Keats, and Lewis Carroll have a little over 40 each, Gray and Stevenson a little under. Among foreign writers Horace and Virgil easily top the list with 25 each.


PROVERBS.

Like the quotations, the proverbs are an entirely fresh selection, in which quality rather than quantity has been aimed at. It would have been quite easy to have increased the number ten times over, but the list would have lost instead of gaining in usefulness. There has been ample space for including all that are well-known or of special interest, and the opportunity has been taken of indicating the earliest appearance of each and also explaining obscure points. It is often the pithiest proverbs whose meaning is not at once apparent. For example, ‘Back may trust, but belly won’t,’ ‘Let alone makes many a loon,’ ‘No money, no Swiss,’ all call for explanatory comment.

Annotation is particularly necessary in the case of Scottish proverbs. For instance, the familiar ‘Jouk and let the jaw gae by’ was given in the previous volume as ‘Joke and let the jaw gae o’er,’ apparently under the impression that the ‘jaw’ was a ‘telling-off’ instead of a pailful of slops. Foreign proverbs have, of course, been provided with a translation.


INDEX.

It is hoped that the value of the index has been increased by incorporating the proverbs with the quotations. This enables the proverbs to be much more fully and clearly indexed.

Every effort has been made to choose the right key-words, that is, those that form the salient point in each quotation, and are the most memorable part of it. Generally speaking, nouns have been preferred to verbs or adjectives for reference words, but when the noun is quite colourless, like ‘man’ or ‘thing’ there did not seem much point in indexing all its occurences. Foreign and Old English words are inserted alphabetically with the rest, Greek letters being identified with their nearest English equivalents. On an average there are three index references per quotation, but, of course, the number varies with the size of the quotation; Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech requires 48.


USES OF THE DICTIONARY.

It will be observed that the index takes up a very large proportion of the total space. This is necessary if the reader is to depend upon it for two of his main objectives—selecting suitable quotations for special occasions and obeying the time-honoured admonition, ‘Always verify your references.’ A further use of the dictionary is that it forms a series of samples giving an idea of what each author is like. It is difficult to run over, for example, the list of extracts from Dickens or Johnson without wanting to read the books they are taken from; and there is no one so widely read but that he may make pleasant discoveries among authors that are new to him.
1950 D.C.B.

For the fifth reprint the whole volume has been carefully gone over and one or two errors and misprints corrected. A few dates of early authors have been newly inserted or adjusted in conformity with the latest researches, and dates have also been filled in of those moderns who have died since the work was first published.
1965 D.C.B.