Johnson's Dictionary - The Dictionary of the Lost Lexicographer

Every dictionary is the result of those that came before it, whether we recognize their names or not. Johnson was using an interleaved folio copy of nathan bailey's dictionary from some years before for his basic word list. He wasn't just pulling the stuff entirely from his mind. Even the very earliest mono lingual dictionaries were building off multi-lingual dictionaries,. giving rise cadre's modolinguin dictionary and et cetera. So webster also wanted to be essentially the american johnson.