 It would be the first of a series of tables categorizing "the sum of knowledge" into ever more complex tables used for both categorizing knowledge for libraries and to define curriculum in schools.If he had published the work, it would have predated the first comprehensive English-language encyclopedia, Ephraim Chambers's 1728 "Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences", by twelve years.In 1716, Johnson was appointed the senior tutor at Yale.