The volumes are ponderous. The title-page in sonorous and dignified language informs one that this is “A Dictionary of the English Language in which the WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers, to which are prefixed, a history of the language, and an English grammar. By Samuel Johnson, A.M. In Two Volumes.” The page is then topped off in good Johnsonian style with a nine-line Latin quotation from Horace.