Note 76 — PREFACE.

"Adams.—But, Sir, how can you do this in three years? Johnson.—Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years. Adams.—But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. Johnson.—Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."—Boswell's "Johnson." Date of 1748.—Ed.