Johnson's presence glows in wise words.

(From Canberra Times)

J OHNSON'S celebrated Dictionary was published 250 years ago in two hefty folio volumes. Even recent facsimiles, second-hand, command premium sums.

Any browser soon finds it is a daily companion. (Samuel Beckett, who did not shirk bodily functions, found ''to snite'' as a different way of describing one of them). Selections cannot convey the delight of its amplitude and the illustrative quotations which Johnson took from authors celebrated and obscure. One needs the full work, so much so that some acquire the first and fourth editions, and even, for railway journeys, the CD-ROM which runs the two side by side and brings those …