Johnson's dictionary may "awaken to the care of purer diction some men of genius, whose attention to argument makes them negligent of style, or whose rapid imagination, like the Peruvian torrents, when it brings down gold, mingles it with sand."
The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language; Addressed to the RIght Honourable Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield
Jack Lynch, Ed. "The Plan of an English Dictionary." Based on a scan of Johnson's 1825 Oxford <i>Works</i>. <a href ="http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/plan.html">http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/plan.html</a>.