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© 2023
Preface to J. Elmer, Tables of Weights and Prices
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By Johnson, Samuel

Samuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand

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PREFACE TO J. ELMER, TABLES OF WEIGHTS AND PRICES (1758)
[Editorial Introduction]
The full title of this work is Tables of Weights and Prices, on a New Plan; by Which the Value of Any Quantity of Goods, sold by Avoirdupois Weight, from a Single Pound to Five Tuns, and from Two Shillings to Ten Pounds Ten Shillings per Hundred, May Be Known Without the Labour of Multiplying or Dividing. Particularly Useful to Dealers in Hops, Wool, Hay, Cheese, Grocery, and Other Commodities. Elmer’s Tables (1758) was published by John Newbery, who seems to have asked Johnson for the preface, as he had for Rolt’s Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1756) and Lindsay’s Evangelical History (1757).1 As F. V. Bernard has observed, Johnson’s preface provides the only prose in Elmer’s 217 pages, and Johnson may have been thinking of this when he wrote in Idler 37 (30 December 1758), “The intercourse of society is maintained without the elegancies of language. . . . The commerce of the world is carried on by easy methods of computation.”2 Nothing is known of J. Elmer except that he appears to have lived in Farnham, Surrey.
[Preface]
The usefulness of tables, justly calculated, is too well known to require proof.1 They are necessary to those who are ignorant of arithmetic, and convenient for those who have more skill.
Many rise by industry above their original rank and early education, and are engaged in very large traffic, without much knowledge of the art of computation; and many who have been taught the necessary rules, have yet not attained to such quickness and dexterity, as to reckon large sums with certainty in the hurry of a shop, or the crowd of a market.


Page 422

Those who are unacquainted with numbers, must depend wholly upon tables; and the buyer may secure himself from fraud, and the seller avoid mistake, by comparing the bill delivered, with the following pages; if there be no difference, he may be certain that the reckoning is right, since it is very unlikely that two erroneous computations should agree.
Those who can reckon more easily, though perhaps not with such certainty as to trust their own computation, may, when they have made their account, examine it by the tables; if they agree, it is right; if they differ, it must be re-examined.
Much care has been taken that these tables should be correctly printed, yet some mistakes have happened, which are noted in the Errata on the last page, and which every reader is cautioned to rectify with his pen, before he uses his book.
These tables must be applied to the traffic by simple addition. Suppose a dealer to purchase of any commodity two tuns, five hundred, two quarters, and ten pounds, at ten shillings a hundred, he must look for that page of the book where goods are cast at 10s. the hundred, and transcribe from the tables these lines:
l. s. d.
2 Tuns, 20 0 0
5 Hundred 2 10 0
2 Quarters 0 5 0
10 Pounds 0 0 102
22 15 10
By this single operation he will obtain the sum required.
It is one of the inconveniences which are yet left without a remedy, that measures both of capacity and weight are uncertain among us, and that one scarcely knows what another means, when he talks of a bushel, or a hundred. The numeral hundred, every one knows to be 100, or five times twenty; but the commercial hundred, if it be counted, is sometimes 120,


Page 423

and if it be weighed, is commonly 112 pounds avoir-dupois. The hundred of one hundred and twelve pounds is used in these tables, so that a tun weighs two thousand two hundred and forty pounds.
For this reason the tables will not serve for those that reckon by single pounds beyond the number 27, a quarter of a hundred being 28.
Every book must be contrived for the convenience of those who are to use it, and the commercial hundred has been chosen, because these pages are designed for traders, not for speculators.3
These tables having been used by some of the principal dealers (not only in this neighbourhood, but at Weyhill Fair)4 for the sale of hops and other commodities, and found very useful, we have prevailed on Mr. Elmer to make them public; who has corrected the books from the press, and left them for sale in the hands of Mr. Newbery in St. Paul’s Church Yard.
Farnham,5
Jan. 2, 1758
C. Vernon.
Edward Beaver.
George Mill.
John Manwaring.
Robert Manwaring.
Thomas Baker.
Jacob Lee.
Stephen Smither.
William Hay.
Andrew Bristow.
James Finden.
Robert Trimmer.


Page 424

Editorial Notes
1 See above, pp. 244 and 397.
2 F. V. Bernard, “A New Preface by Samuel Johnson,” Philological Quarterly 55 (1976), 445–49: 446. Our headnote is indebted to Bernard’s article.
1 F. V. Bernard points out that SJ began some other prefaces with a similar sentence. See, for example, his preface to the Preceptor (p. 170 above).
2 The table in question computes the cost of 10 pounds as 10½ pence, rounding to the nearest farthing (a quarter of a penny). SJ may have “corrected” this, not bearing in mind that pounds in these tables equal 1/112th of a hundred-weight, rather than 1/100th. His remark below about “those who reckon by single pounds” also suggests this oversight.
3 Speculator: “An observer; a contemplator” (Dictionary, sense 2). The adaptation of the word to financial activity came later (see OED, sense 6).
4 Weyhill Fair: a historic fair held in the village of Weyhill, three miles west of Andover, Hampshire.
5 Elmer and the merchants listed on the right seem all to be from Farnham, Surrey, about thirty-five miles east of Weyhill and forty-five miles southwest of London (see London Lives).
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Document Details
Document TitlePreface to J. Elmer, Tables of Weights and Prices
AuthorJohnson, Samuel
Creation Date1758
Publ. DateN/A
Alt. TitleN/A
Contrib. AuthorElmer, J.
ClassificationSubject: Math; Subject: Arithmetic; Subject: Business; Genre: Preface
PrinterN/A
PublisherJ. Elmer
Publ. PlaceLondon
VolumeSamuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand
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PREFACE TO J. ELMER, T...
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