^^'^. >.<^,*.1'^«>«««.,''»S- tim?ii^ %^)^ ,i/ViMft/^^S; l^^LAUfakWuOTCI ?^^n^\^*?/»«,« *r^,'^,A/^^r^^.A *^*^^-^««lw^^^^..,,^.^w^^^^ .^.^^f^ '^n^pv^^f./ ?^22ii>2'it:^^ic; ^'^^^^ %^AA AilAA' «a^«w' '•"-^^V^' A^^^ $^i^.. lkffli^i«2«*« -v'»'*-*'-"^;»^jJ;: »*a5!iww' ;>'-a;;'"><'* ^'^^A^A/^'^;HXflA;;A?', ''^^*??»'\K'^^t An A ::-'-^I^X^BM ai«M*55%itaJ^lf h/[ S (.uAu, (^ ^^^j^^ ' ^ e.4c^) / /^,/^e,^^«^-— ^^><-— - -'-^'^ ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN OUE ENGLISH DICTIONARIES, BEIKG THE SUBSTANCE OF TWO PAPEES BEAD BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, Kov. 5, AND Nov. T9, 1857. BY RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. LONDON": JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 1857. rONDOK: SATILL AND EDWAEDS, PBIJTTERS, CHAITD05 STBEXT, COTEKT GAKDKK. 9'Si ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN OUK ENGLISH DICTIONAEIES. THE course which was adopted by the Philological Society at the conclusion of its last session, with a view of re- moving some of the imperfections, and supplying some of the deficiencies, of our English Dictionaries, is known to many, probably to nearly all of its members. Many, too, are aware of the general acceptance with which the scheme has been received, as one at once practical and full of promise ; of the large amount of co-operation which has been freely tendered both from members of the Society and from others, so that we may reasonably hope that the results will not fall short of expectation. Taking a lively interest in this effort, I have asked permission to read a paper which will enter somewhat more fully into the subject of the omissions needing to be supplied, than was possible in the necessarily brief statement circulated a few months ago ; which will also confirm the assertions therein made by a certain number of proofs ; as many as those brief limits of time, by which I also am shut in, will allow. At the same time let me before commencing make one observation. Some of those willing to co-operate in this scheme have already transmitted to the Secretary the first instalments of their work, the result of their investigations up to the present time. He will probably ere long lay before B .S27 2 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN you some specimens of these tlie first-fruits of that harvest which we hope to gather in. I have^ however, thought it right to abstain from looking at any portion of these, partly as being unwilling even to seem to employ for a private end contributions made for a more public object ; but with the further advantage, that I am thus able to shew, that it needs no such combined effort of many to make palpable our deficiencies, however it may need this to remove them ; but that any one who is not merely and altogether a guest and stranger in our earlier literature, has in his power to bring forward abundant evidence even from his single, and it may be slenderly furnished treasure-house, of the large omissions which it is desirable to supply. The plan which I propose to follow in treating my subject will be this. Remembering the excellent maxim of the Schoolmen, Generalia non pnngtmtj I shall deal as little as possible with these generals, shall enter as much as I can into particulars in proof of my assertion. Such a course, indeed, will be attended with a certain inconvenience, which is this : the fact that the vocabulary of our Dictionaries is seriously deficient can only be shown by an accumulation of evidence, each several part of which is small and com- paratively insignificant in itself; only deriving weight and importance from the circumstance that it is one of a multi- tude of like proofs ; while yet it will be impossible within the limits of one paper, or even of two, to bring more than comparatively a very small portion of this evidence before you. Neither my limits, nor your patience, would admit of more. This inconvenience, however, I cannot avoid. Even as it is, I fear I shall put your patience to the trial. Per- haps I shall make the smallest demands upon it at all consistent with my subject, by grouping the materials which I wish to present to you according to the following arrange- ment. Our Dictionaries then appear to me deficient in the following points; I do not say that there are not other OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 3 points likewise, but to these I would desire at present to direct your attention. I. Obsolete words are incompletely rej^istered; some in- serted, some not; with no reasonable rule adduced for the omission of these, the insertion of those other. II. Families or groups of words are often imperfect, some members of a family inserted, while others are omitted. III. Oftentimes much earlier examples of the employ- ment of words exist than any which our Dictionaries have cited ; indicating that they were earlier introduced into the language than these examples would imply; and in case of words now obsolete, much later, frequently marking their currency at a period long after that when we are left to suppose that they passed out of use. IV. Important meanings and uses of words are passed over ; sometimes the later alone given^ while the earlier, without which the history of words will be often maimed and incomplete, or even unintelligible, are unnoticed. V. Comparatively little attention is paid to the distin- guishing of synonymous words. VI. Many passages in our literature are passed by, which might be usefully adduced in illustration of the first intro- duction, etymology, and meaning of words. VII. And lastly, our Dictionaries err in redundancy as well as in defect, in the too much as well as the too little ; all of them inserting some things, and some of them many things, which have properly no claim to find room in their pages. / Such are the principal shortcomings which I find in those books on which we must ever chiefly rely in seeking to obtain a knowledge of our native tongue. I must detain you one moment before I proceed to my proofs, and I will employ that moment in expressing my earnest trust that nothing which I shall say may even seem inconsistent with the highest respect, admiration, and honour, for the labourers, whether living or dead, in this field of English B 2 4 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN lexicography. It is comparatively easy to pick a hole here, or to detect a flaw there ; to point out stones, it may be many stones, in the way, which ought to have been built up into the wall ; but such edifices as our great English Dictionaries could only have been reared by enormous labour, patience, and skill : and the same somewhat close examination which detects these little blemishes, and dis- covers these omissions, which shews us, what we might have guessed before, namely, that they underlie the infirmity common to all other works of man^s hands, does to a far greater extent make us conscious how vast the amount is of that labour, patience, and skill which they embody. To come, then, now to my proofs. And yet before these proofs can be considered to prove anything, I must ask you to be at one with me in regard of what the true idea of a Dictionary is, what it ought to include, and what to exclude. If we are not agreed in this, much that is adduced may seem beside the mark. I will state, then, very briefly what my idea of a Dictionary is, hoping to find that it is also yours ; and if not, endeavouring to persuade you to make it yours, as that which on fuller deliberation alone commends itself to your minds. A Dictionary, then, according to that idea of it which seems to me alone capable of being logically maintained, is an inventory of the language : much more indeed, but this primarily, and with this only at present we will deal. It is no task of the maker of it to select the good words of a language. If he fancies that it is so, and begins to pick and choose, to leave this and to take that, he will at once go astray. The business which he has undertaken is to collect and arrange all the words, whether good or bad, whether they commend themselves to his judgment or otherwise, which, with certain exceptions hereafter to be specified, those writing in the language have employed. He is an historian of it, not a critic. The delectus ver- OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 5 lorum, on which, so much, on which nearly everything in style depends, is a matter with which he has no concern. There is a constant confusion here in men's minds. They conceive of a Dictionary as though it had this function, to he a standard of the language ; and the pretensions to he this which the French Dictionary of the Academy sets up, may have helped on this confusion. It is nothing of the kind. A special Dictionary may propose to itself to he such, to include only the words on which the compiler is willing to set the mark of his approval, as J)eing fit, and in his judg- ment the only fit, to be employed by those who would write with purity and taste. Of the probable worth of such a collection I express no opinion. I will only say that I cannot understand how any writer with the smallest confidence in himself, the least measure of that vigour and vitality which would justify him in addressing his countrymen in written or spoken discourse at all, should consent in this matter to let one self-made dictator, or forty, determine for him what words he should use, and what he should forbear from using. At all events, a Dictionary of the English language such a work would not have the slightest pretence to be called. What sort of completeness, or what value, would a Greek lexicon possess, a Scott and Liddell, from whose pages all the words condemned by Phrynichus and the other Greek purists, and, so far as style is concerned, many of them justly condemned, had been dismissed? The lexi- cographer is making an inventory ; that is his business ; he may think of this article which he inserts in his catalogue, that it had better be consigned to the lumber-room with all speed, or of the other, that it only met its deserts when it was so consigned long ago; but his task is to make his inventory complete. Where he counts words to be needless, affected, pedantic, ill put together, contrary to the genius of the language, there is no objection to his saying so; on the contrary, he may do real service in this way : but let b ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN their claim to belong to our book -language be the humblest, and he is bound to record them, to throw wide with an im- partial hospitality his doors to them, as to all other. A Dictionary is an historical monument, the history of a nation contemplated from one point of view, and the wrong ways into which a language has wandered, or attempted to wander, may be nearly as instructive as the right ones in which it has travelled : as much may be learned, or nearly as much, from its failures as its successes, from its follies as from its wisdom. • The maker, for example, of an English Dictionary may not consider ' mulierosity,' ^ or ' subsannation,^ ^ or ^ coaxation,^ ^ or 'ladibundness,'* or 'delinition,^^ or ^sep- temfluous,'^ or ^ medioxumous,^ ^ or ' mirificent,^ ^ or 'pal- miferous,^^ or ^opime,^^^ or a thousand other words of a similar character which might be adduced (I take all these from a single work of Henry More), to contribute much to the riches of the English tongue ; yet has he not therefore any right to omit them, as all these which I have just ^ " Both Gaspar Sanctus and he tax Antiochus for his mulierosity and excess in hixury." — H. Moee, Mystery of Iniquity^ b. 2, c. 10, § 3. ^ " Idolatry is as absolute a suhsannation and vilification of God as malice could invent." — Id. ih. b. i, c. 5, § 11. ^ " The importunate, harsh, and disharmonious coaxations of frogs." — Id. ib. b. I. c. 6, § 16. ■* " That ludihundness of nature in her gamaieus and such like sportful and ludicrous productions." — Id. ib. b. i, c. 15, § 14. ^ " The delinition also of the infant's ears and nostrils with the spittle." —Id. ib. b. I, c. 18, § 7. ^ " The main streams of this sejptemfiuous river [the Nile]." — Id. ib. b. I, c. 16, § II. " ** The whole order of the medioxumous or internuntial deities." — - Id. ib. b. I, c. 12, § 6. ® "Enchantment Agrippa defines to be nothing but the conveyance of a certain mirijicent power into the thing enchanted." — Id. ib. b. i, c. 18, § 3. ^ " The palmiferous company triumphs, and the Heavenly Jerusalem is seen upon earth." — Id. ib. b. 2, c. 6, § 18. ^^ "Great and opime preferments and dignities." — Id. ib. b. 2, c. 15, § 3. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 7 adduced, with a thousand more of like kind, have been omitted from our Dictionaries.^ I will not urge that one or two in this list might be really serviceable {' mulierosity/ for instance, expresses what no other word in the language would do) ; but admitting them to be purely pedantic, that they would be quite intolerable in use, still they involve and illustrate an important fact in the history of our language, — the endeavour to latinize it to a far greater extent than has actually been done, the refusal on its part to adopt more than a certain number of these Latin candidates for admission into its ranks, — and, therefore, should not be omitted from the archives of the language. If, indeed, the makers of our Dictionaries had, by a like omission, put the same stamp of non-allowance upon all other words of this character, on all which to them seemed pedantic, inconsistent with the true genius of the language, threatening to throw too pre- j)onderating a weight into one of its scales, this course, although mistaken, would yet have been consistent. But they have not done so. They all include, and rightly, a multitude of such words. But admitting these, such, for instance, as ^fabulosity,' ' populosity,' 'nidorous,' 'ataraxy,' 'exi- conize,' diaphaneity,' — admitting these by the hundred, they had forfeited their right, were it only on the ground of consistency, to exclude such as I have just enumerated, not to say that the idea of a Dictionary demands their insertion. It is, let me once more repeat, for those who use a language to sift the bran from the flour, to reject that and retain ^ It may be objected to this statement, that two or three of those above quoted are found in Johnson or in Todd ; they are so ; * eoaxa- tion/ for instance, which the latter defines as " the art of coaxing" ! but they are there without examples of their use ; and though I shall not often refer to such words, when I do I shall deal with them as words wholly wanting in our Dictionaries ; for to me there is no difference between a word absent from a Dictionary, and a word there, but un sus- tained by an authority. Even if Webster's Dictionary were in other respects a better book, the almost total absence of illustrative quota- tions would deprive it of all value in my eyes. 8 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN this. They are to be the true Bella Cruscans : this title of ftirfuratores is a usurpation when assumed by the makers of a Dictionary, and their assumption of it can only serve to show how little they have rightly apprehended the task which they have undertaken. I proceed to support by evidence in each case the several complaints which I have made. T. In regard of obsolete words, our Dictionaries have no certain rule of admission or exclusion. But how_, it may be asked, ought they to hold themselves in regard of these ? This question has been already implicitly answered in what was just laid down regarding the all-comprehensive cha- racter which belongs to them. There are some, indeed, who taking up a position a little different from theirs who would have them to contain only the standard words of the language, yet proceeding on the same inadequate view of their object and intention, count that they should aim at presenting the body of the language as now existing ; this and no more ; leaving to archaic glossaries the gathering in of words that are current no longer. But a little reflec- tion will show how untenable is this position; how this rule, consistently followed out, would deprive a Dictionary of a large part of its usefulness. Surely if I am reading Swift, and come on the word ^to brangle,^ or light upon ' druggerman^ in Pope, I ought to be able to find them in my Dictionary. Yes, it will perhaps be conceded, we will admit the few archaic words which are met with in writers so recent as Pope and Swift. But then if I find 'palliard' or ' mazer' in Dryden, must I be content to be ignorant of their meaning, unless besides my English Dictionary, I have another of the obsolete English tongue? Dryden's few archaisms, it is allowed, should find place. But I plead then, that in reading Jeremy Taylor I come upon Morter,' ' spagyrical,' and other words, hard to be understood : surely I may fairly demand that my Dictionary shall help OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 9 me over any verbal difficulties which I may find in Taylor ; and in this way I travel back to Shakespeare, to Spenser, to Gascoigne, to Hawes, to Chaucer, Wiclif, and at length to Piers Ploughman, Robert of Gloucester, or whatever other work is taken as the earliest in our tongue. It is quite impossible with any consistency to make a stand any- where, or to admit any words now obsolete without includ- ing, or at least attempting to include all. What I complain of in our Dictionaries is that they do not accept this necessity, and in its full extent. They all undertake to give the archaisms of the language, but all with certain reservations and exceptions. "Obsolete words,'^ says Johnson, "are admitted when they are found in authors not obsolete, or when they have any force or beauty that may deserve revival." I will not pause here to inquire what a lexicographer has to do with the question whether a word deserves revival or not; but rather call your attention to the fact that Johnson does not even observe his own rule of comprehension, imperfect and in- adequate as that is. When the words omitted may be counted by hundreds, I suppose by thousands, it seems absurd, almost a weakening of one^s case, to quote two or three, which yet is all that I can undertake to do. I have no choice, however, but to cite these. 'Grimsire,' or ' grimsir,' I meet everywhere in our old authors, in Mas- singer, in Burton, in Holland,^ in twenty more, some of them certainly authors not obsolete, but he has not found place for it ; nor yet llichardson. This word, it may be pleaded, presents no great difficulty, though this would be no excuse for its omission; but here is ' hickscorner,' of which the meaning is anything but obvious : (the ' hick- scorner' is the loose ribald scoffer at sacred things) ; this ^ " Even Tiberius Ciesar, Avho otherwise was known ^or&gTnmsir, and the most unsociable and melancholic man in the world, required in that manner to be salved and wished well unto, whensoever he sneezed."— Pliny, vol. 2, p. 297. 10 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN word also, of continual recurrence in our old authors,^ might be sought for vainly in our Dictionaries. If Milton uses ^ jackstraw/ styling Salmasius " an inconsiderable fellow and a jackstraWy'^ why should I not know what a 'jack- straw' is, Avithout recurring to some archaic glossary for this knowledge? They indeed would not help me here, for the word is in none of them. Still less satisfactory is Richardson's rule of admission and exclusion. " Obsolete words,'' he says, " have been diligently sought for, and all such, but no other, as could contribute any aid to the investigations of etymology, as diligently preserved." But why those only which would " contribute aid to the investigations of etymo- logy?" why not those also which should enable us to measure in its length and breadth the intellectual territory which our English language has occupied as well as that which it occupies now, to form some estimate of its won- derful riches, as in other ways, so also by a contempla- tion of the enormous losses which it has endured without being seriously impoverished thereby ? Why not preserve all those obsolete words which are necessary to enable the student to read his English classics with comfort and with profit ? In carrying out his scheme he has often omitted, and not without loss, archaic words which Johnson or Todd has inserted. Thus I observe ' lurry' (a word occur- ring in Milton and Henry More), 'privado' (in Fuller and Jeremy Taylor), and two I just noticed, '^druggerman' and ' palliard,' duly registered and explained in their pages, but altogether omitted in his. Sometimes the word thus omitted is very curious. Thus no one of our Dictionaries, and I may say the same of our glossaries, contains the word 'umstroke;' which is yet ^ " What is more common in our days than, when such hichscorners will be merry at their drunken banquets, to fall in talk of some one minister or other ?" — Pilkington, Exposition on Nehemiah, c. 2. 2 Preface to The Defence of the People of England. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 11 most noteworthy, bein^, as it is, the sole survivor of its kind. For while there is abundant evidence that our early- English derived largely from the Anglo-Saxon the use of the preposition ' um' or * umbe'(=aju<^Q in composition, (thus ' umgang,' ^ umhappe,' ' umbeset,' and many more, for which see Halliwell), no single word with this prefix, ex- cepting only this one, has lived on into our later English ; which yet our Dictionaries, as I have said, have not observed, or, observing, have not cared to register. I incline to think they did not observe it ; for while most of Fuller's other works have been diligently used by our lexico- graphers, his Pisgah Sight of Palestine, one of his most curious and most characteristic, and in which '■ umstroke* twice occurs,^ has been, as far as my experience reaches, entirely overlooked by them. Not less curious from the other extreme of the lanjruajre are the Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, words, which it has been endeavoured to transplant without alteration into English, but which have refused to take root here ; a record of the attempt to transplant which ought not the less to be preserved, while yet often it has not been. Thus Holland sought to introduce Aristotle's KififdiK,^ though certainly our early English was rich enough in words to ex- press what is exprest by this, so rich that we have let drop more than half of them — 'snudge,' 'curmudgeon,' 'gripe,' (not in our Dictionaries in this sense, but so used by Burton), ' pinchpenny,' ' clutch fist/ ' penifather,' ' nip- ' " Such towns as stand (as one may say) on tiptoes, on the very umstroke, or on any pai-t of the utmost line of any map, (unresolved in a manner to stay out or come in), are not to be presumed placed accord- ing to exactness, but only signify them there or thereabouts." — Pt. i, b. I, c. 14 ; cf. pt. 2, b. 5, c. 20. ' " He that calleth a liberal man, wellknown to spend magnificently, a base mechanical kumhix and a pinching penifather, ministereth matter of good sport and laughter to the party whom he seemeth so to challenge or menace." — JPlutarch, p. 665. 12 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN farthing/ and many more. For Latin words, ' ardelio^^ figures in Burton, 'aemulus^^ in Drayton, 'rex' in the popular phrase, "to play rex'^^ or to play the tyrant, but none of these in our Dictionaries. Sylvester, whose works, by the way, are a mine as yet very inadequately wrought for lexicographical purposes, constantly employs the Italian 'farfalla'* for butterfly. Let me observe here that provincial or local words stand on quite a different footing from obsolete. We do not com- plain of their omission. In my judgment we should, on the contrary, have a right to complain if they were admitted, and it is an oversight that some of our Dictionaries occa- sionally find room for them, in their avowed character of provincial words ; when indeed, as such, they have no right to a place in a Dictionary of the English tongue. I have placed an emphasis on " as such /' for while this is so, it must never be forgotten that a word may be local or provincial now, which was once current over the whole land. There are many such, which belonging once to the written and spoken language of all England, and having free course through the land, have now fallen from their former state and dignity, have retreated to remoter districts, and there maintain an obscure existence still; citizens once, they are only provincials now. These properly find place in a Dictionary, not, however, in right of what they now are, but of what they once have been; not because they now survive in some single district, but because they once lived through the whole land. I regret the absence ^ " Striving to get that which we had better be without, ardelios, busy bodies as we are." — Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. i, 2, 7, 7. ^ " As this brave warrior was, so no less dear to us The rival of his fame, his only cemulus." JPolyolbion, Song 18. ^ "As helpers of your joy, not to domineer and play rex" — Kogebs, Naaman the Syrian, p. 217. * "And, liQyf farfalla, in her radiant shine, Too bold, I burn these tender wings of mine." The Magnificence. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 13 of a number of these from our Dictionaries, and will in- stance a few. ' Spong' is now a Suffolk, or, it may be, an East Anglian, word. Halliwell deals with it as thus provincial, and rightly describes it as '^ an irregular narrow and projecting part of a field;'' corresponding, therefore, very nearly to the 'sling,' 'slang,' or 'slinget,' of some of our Midland counties. Our Dictionaries know nothing of it ; nor should they take note of it on the score of its present provincial existence ; but they should on the ground that it once had free course in our literary English, being often used by Fuller.^ Once more, take the verb 'to hazle.' Halliwell and Wright explain it rightly as " the first process in drying washed linen," and assign to it also East Anglia as the region where it is current ; but it was once not East Anglian, but English, as a noble passage, of which I cite a few words, from a great but little-known divine, will prove.^ Then, once more, the verb ' to flaite,' signifying to scare, to terrify, and standinof in the same relation to ' flit' that ' fug^are' does to ' fugere' — this may be, as our glossaries tell us, a word of the North Country now ; but it was a word of the whole country once, and as such should have found place not in our glossaries alone, but in our Dictionaries no less.* ' To hopple' (the word is not in Richardson), Todd gives as a northern word, and without example. Supposing he was right in saying so, he had no business to give it at all ; but he is not ; for it is employed by Henry More.'* ' Dozzled' our archaic glossaries assign to the Eastern Counties, ^ " The tribe of Judah with a narrow spong confined on the kingdom of Edom." — APisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. 2, b. 4, c. 2; and often. ^ " Thou, who by that happy wind of thine didst hazle and dry up the forlorn dregs and slime of Noah's deluge, cause a new face of zeal and grace to appear upon our age, drunken and soaked with ease and sen- suality." — Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p, 886. ^ " Desire God io flay te and gaster thee out of that lap and bosom, as Samson out of Dalilah's." — Id. ih. p. 877; cf. pp. 138, 453, * " Superstitiously hoppled {i.e. entangled] in the toils and nets of superfluous opinions." — On Godliness, b. 9, c. 7, § 8. 14 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN and explain rightly as meaning stupid, heavy; but we should not have to seek it, or at least to find it, only in them; Bishop Hacket employs it.^ I believe a corn-sieve is still called a ' try^^ ^^ some parts of England, a small enclosure a ' pingle,^^ a pond a ^ pulke,^* but the words had once nothing local about them, that they should be relegated to these collections, and found only in them. While I am thus dealing with obsolete words, and before leaving this part of my subject, let me say a word or two on what the Germans call nehenformen (we have no word which exactly answers to this), and adduce a handful of these, in proof of the incompleteness with which they are given in our Dictionaries. It was once attempted to make an English word of ' analysis,' and to speak of the * analyse:'^ examples of this I have before me in Henry More, Hacket, Rogers ; but our Dictionaries do not notice it. "When ' big' was intended in the sense of proud, it often took the shape of ^ bog.'^ ' To clitcli'^ was current as well as ^ to clutch,' ' corsive' no less than ^ corrosive.' ^ Flox'^ was a variation of ' flax' as well as ' flix ;' it was applied like ' flix' to the down ^ " In such a perplexity every man asks his fellow, "What's best to be done ? and being dozzled with fear, thinks every man wiser than him- self." — L^fe of Archhisliojp Williams, pt. 2, p. 142. ^ " They will not pass through the holes of the sieve, ruddle, or tri/, if they be narrow." — Holland, JPlutarch, p. 86. ' " The Academy, a little pingle or plot of ground, was the habita-i tion of Plato, Xenocrates, and Polemon." — Id. ib. p. 275. ^ " It is easy for a woman to go to a pond or joulJce standing near i(\ her door (though the water be not so good) rather than to go to a foun- tain of living water further off." — Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 842. ^ " The analyse of it [a little tractate] may be spared, since it is in many hands." — Hacket, Life of ArchhisJiop Williams, pt. 2, p. 104. ^ " The thought of this should cause the jollity of thy spirit to quail, and thy hog and bold heart to be abashed." — Rogees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 18. "^ " If any of them be athirst, he hath an earthen pot wherewith to ditch up water out of the running river." — Holland, Xenojphons Cyropcedia, p. 4. ^ " They dress it [their nest] all over with down feathers, or fine^ox." •—Id. Fliny, pt. i, p. 288. ' OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 15 of animals. Like almost all other words of the same kind, ' stick/ for instance, which varies with ' stitch,' ' belk' with 'belch,' so ' prick' appears often as 'pritch;'^ 'ruddle'^ existed as well as * riddle' or ' raddle.' ' To wanze' is the constant form in which ' to wane' occurs in some of our writers -^ our glossaries take notice of the word, characterizing it as a form of East Anglia, but it ought to find place in our Dictionaries as well. These last have ' priestess,' but not ' priestress,'* which is curious as having been evidently formed while the word was yet in that earlier shape, which survives in * Frester John.' II. Families of words in our Dictionaries are often in- complete, some members inserted, while others are omitted; the family being really larger and more widely spread than they leave us to suppose. Thus ' awk,' which survives in our ' awkward,' has not merely ' awkly,' but ' awkness,'^ which none of them have found room for. Coleridge, I am inclined to believe, supposed he had formed upon ' aloof the very serviceable word, ' aloofness ;' but, though it has found its way into none of our Dictionaries, it also is two hundred years old.^ 'Nasute' should have been * "The least word uttered awry, the least conceit taken, or pritck, the breaking in of a cow into their grounds, yea, sheep or pigs, is enough to make suits, and they will be revenged." — Rogebs, Naaman the Syrian^ p. 270. ' " The holes of the sieve, ruddle, or try." — Holland, Plutarch, p. 86. ^ " Many bewrayed themselves to be time-servers, and wanzed away to nothing, as fast as ever they seemed to come forward." — Rogebs, Naaman the Syrian. * " The priestress of Minerva, m Athens." — Holland, Plutarch, p. 866. * " Come, my child, I see thou fearest thou shalt never get anything ; hut look not thou at thine own awkness, look at the Lord's ease." — Rogebs, Naaman the Syrian, p. 378. * " [God] stings him by unthankfuhiess of such as owe most love, by imfaithfulness and aloofness of such as have been greatest friends." — Id, ih. p. 95. 16 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN completed with ' nasuteness ;^ ^fume' and ^ fumisli' with ' fumishness f ^ verb' and ' verbaP with ' verbalist ;^ ' con- culcate/ as its legitimate consequence, has ^conculcation/* If ' quadripartite/ why not ' quadripartition /^ if ' afterwit/ why not 'aftermtted/^ as an epithet applied to those who deal in ^ hadiwist/ (had-I-wist) or wisdom which always arrives too late for the occasion — a more pregnant word than should be willingly lost sight of? If ^say' as equal to essay or proof, why not also ^sayman/''' above all, with Bacon's authority for its use ? Again, if our Dictionaries find room, as they ought, for ^kex,' the old English name for hemlock, (or one of them rather, for only Richardson has it), why not also for ^ kexy' ?^ if ' fitch,' another form of vetch, is admitted, why not also * " All which, to any man that has hut a moderate nasuteness, cannot but import, that in the title of this sect that call themselves the Family of Love, there must be signified no other love than that which is merely natural or animal." — H. Moee, On Godliness, b. 8, c. 2, § 2. * " Drive Thou out of us all fumishness, indignation, and self-will." — CovEBDALE, Fruitful Lessons (Parker Soc. ed.), p. 284. ' "The frothy discourses of empty verbalists.'" — Gell, Essay toward the Amendment of the English Translation of the Bible ^ 1659, Preface. " Yet not ashamed these verbalists still are, From youth, till age or study dims their eyes, To engage the grammar rules in civil war." — Lord Beooke, On Human Learning. * " The conculcation of the outward Court of the Temple by the Gentiles." — Heney Moee, Mystery of Iniquity, b. 2, c. 12, § i. * " The quadripartition of the Greek Empire into four parts." — Id. ib. b. 2, c. 8. § 3. * " Our fashions of eating make us slothful and unlusty to labour and study, .... afterwitted (as we call it), incircumspect, inconsiderate, heady, rash." — Tyndale, Exposition of Matthew vi. J' " If your lordship in anything shall make me your sayman^ I will be hurt before your lordship shall be hurt." — Letter to the Earl of Buckingham. * " The earth will grow more and more dry and sterile in succession of ages ; whereby it will become more kexy, and lose of its solidity."— H. Moee, On Godliness, b. 6, c. 10, § 3. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 17 ' fitchy^ T if they find place for ' fog' (I mean in the sense of rank grass), they should do so for ' foggy/- stuffed with this rank grass, as well. ' Spendthrift' should have ' spend- thrifty /^ ' hispid' should be completed with ' hispidity/* ' specious' with ^ speciosity,'^ and though one may not be in love with ' sordidity,'^ yet, since Burton uses it, there is no ground for its omission. Why again * maleficent,' and not also * maleficence ;'7 ' sanguinolent,' and not ' san- guinolency ;'® ' flowret,' and not ' flowretry ;'^ ' fashion,' and not ' fashionist ;'^° 'prowl' and 'prowler,' without ' prowlery ;'^^ 'brim' (in the sense of fierce, vehement), and * " Each board had two tenons fastened in their silver sockets, which sockets some conceive made fitchy or picked, to be put into the earth ; which we rather believe flat and firm, standing fast on the surface of the ground." — Fullbb, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. 2, b. 4, c. 4. ^ " Those who on a sudden grow rather foggy than fat by feeding on sacrilegious morsels, do pine away by degrees, and die at last of incurable consumptions." — Id. ih. pt. i, b. 3, c. 12. * " Spendthrifty, unclean, and ruffianlike courses.'* — Rooebs, Naa- man the Syrian, p. 611. * " The hispidity, or hairiness of his skin." — H. MoBE, On Godli- ness, b. 3, c. 6, § 5. ^ " So great a glory as all the speciosiiies of the world could not equalize." — Id. ib. b. 4, c. 12, § 4. " " Weary and ashamed of their own sordidity and manner of Hfe." — BuBTON, Anatomy of Melancholy , pt. 3, 2, 5, 3. ^ " The Bishop of Lincoln felt it, who fell into trouble, not for want of innocence, but for want of a parliament to keep him from maleficence." — Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. 2, p. 85. * " That great red dragon with seven heads, so called from his san- guinolencyy — H. Moee, Mystery of Iniquity, b. i, c. 8, § 4. ' " Nor was all this fiowretry, and other celature on the cedar, lost labour, because concealed." — Fulleb, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. I, b. 3, c. 5. 10 « y^Q y^^r^y conceive many of these ornaments were only temporary, as used by i\iQ fashionists of that age." — Id. ib. pt. 2, 6, 4, § 7. " " Thirty-seven monopolies, with other sharking prowleries, were decried in one parliament." — Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. I, p. 51. C 18 ox SOME DEFICIENCIES IN not 'brimly;'^ 'gingerly/ that is, youngherly, and not ' gingerness^^ also ? Many verbs, such as ' to ease/ * to merit/ ' to extirp/ the older form of ' to extirpate/ have substantives formed on them — ' easer/^ ' meriter/^ ' extirper/^ If it be urged that this is assumed of course, and that it therefore is super- fluous to note them, I cannot assent to this explanation of their absence; and seeing that 'forfeiter,^ 'lapper,^ 'thirster,' and other little-used words of the same formation, are introduced, there is at least an inconcinnity in omitting these, as they have been omitted by tens and by hundreds. But further, to work back from later formations to earlier, on which they are superinduced, and which they not merely pre-suppose as possible, but which actually exist. If ' sorti- legious' is admitted, ' sortilege'^ should be so as well ; if ' pervicacious,^ then ' pervicacy,^^ which it assumes, and which has been in actual use, should not be left out, as it is by Richardson, and, which is the same thing, left without an example by Todd; 'garish' should not stand without 'gare;'^ nor ' soporous ' and ' soporiferous/ without ' sopour.' ^ ^ " A man sees better, and discerns more brimly his colours." — PuT- TENHAM, Art of Poetry, p. 256. ^ " It is a world to consider their coyness in gestures, . . . their gin- gerness in tripping on toes like young goats." — Stubs, The Anatomy of Abuses, 1585, p. 42. 3 RoGEES, Naaman the Syrian, p. 40. '* Id. ih. p. 34 1. ^ " Founders of states, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, were honoured." — Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature. ^ " I have good hope that as the gods in favour have directed this sortilege, so they will be present and propitious unto me." — Holland, Zivy,^. 1 183. 7 " The Independents at last, when they had refused with sufficient pervicacy to associate with the Presbyterians, did resolve to show their proper strength." — Sylvestee, Life of Richard Baxter, p. T04. ^ " The multitude hastened in a fell and cruel gare to try the utmost hazard of battle." — Holland, Ammianus Marcellinus, p. 412. " In B.gare and heat they will run, ride, and take any pains; but only so long as the pang holds." — Rogees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 390. ^ " To awake the Christian world out of this deep sopour or lethargy. — H. MoEE, Mystery of Iniquity, Preface to the Second Part. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 19 ' Excarnification' stands in Todd (it is not in Richardson) without ' excarnificate/^ from which it grew; in like manner we have ' dehonestation/ but not the verb ' to dehonestate/^ which yet is employed by Jeremy Taylor ; ' fellowfeeling/ but not the verb ' to fellowfeel/^ The designation of a female person, by changing 'er' into ' ess/ as ' flatterer/ ' flatteress/ or by the addition of 'ess/ as 'captain/ 'captainess/ was once much more common than it is now. The language is rapidly abdicating its rights in this matter. But these forms, though now many of them obsolete, are very indicative of the former wealth of the language, and have good claim to be regis- tered. I have noted the following : ' buildress,'^ 'captainess,'^ 'flatteress/^ ' intrudress/' ' soveraintess,'^ which have not so been. ^ "What [shall we say] to the racking and excarnijicating their bodies, before this last punishment ?" — Id. ib. b. 2, c. 15. * " The excellent and wise pains he took in this particular no man can dehonestate or reproach, but he that is not willing to confess that the Church of England is the best reformed Church in the world." — Sermon preached at the Funeral of the Lord Primate, ' " We should count her a very tender mother which should bear the pain twice, and fellowfeel the infant's strivings and wrestlings the second time, rather than want her child." — Rogebs, Naaman the Sj/rian, p. 339. * "Sherah,the daughter of Ephraim the younger, the greatest huildress in the whole Bible." — Fulleb, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. i, b. 2, c. 9. ^ " Dar'st thou counsel me From my dear captainess to run away ?" — Sib p. Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, 88. ' " Those women that in times past were called in Cypres, Colacides, r.e.Jlatteresses." — Holland, Plutarch, -p. 86, 7 " Joash should recover his rightful throne from the unjust usurpation of Athaliah, an idolatrous intrudress thereinto." — Fulleb, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. 2, b. 3, c. 10. ^ " O second honour of the lamps supernal, Sure calendar of festivals eternal. Sea's soveraintess, sleep-bringer, pilgrim's guide. Peace-loving queen." — Sylvesteb, Du Bartas. Fourth Day of the First Week. C2 20 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN A vast number of diminutives exist in the language, which have never found their way into our Dictionaries. Here are eight with a single termination : ' wormling/^ 'loveling/2 ' dwarfling/^ ' chasteling/^ (= eunuch), 'time- ling/^ 'setling/^ 'niceling/7 Adjectives in 'en/ of the same formation as our still existent ' brazen/ ' earthen/ ' wheaten/ and noting, like the Greek adjectives in ivog, the stuff or material of which any- thing is made, have been far more numerous than our Dic- tionaries would imply. I can only adduce these four, 'eldern,^^ ' tinnen,^^ ' yarnen/^^ ' wispen,^^^ as having found no place in them ; but am disposed to think many more will yet be ^ " O, dusty wormling ! dar'st thou strive and stand With heaven's high Monarch ? wilt thou (wretch) demand Count of his deeds ?" — Id. The Imposture. ^ " These frolic lovelings fraighted nests do make." — Id. ib. ^ " When the dwarjiing did perceive me." — Id. The Woodman's Bear, 33. ^ " It [Matthew xix.] enfcreateth of three kinds of chastelings." — Becon, Contents of St. Matthew's Gospel. ^ " Divers ministers, which are faint-hearted, and were, as it seemeth, but timelings." — Id. The Supplication. ^ " Such as be newly planted in the religion of Christ, and have taken no sure root in the same, are easily moved as young setlings." — Id. Preface to Various Tracts. " " But I would ask these nicelings one question, wherein if they can resolve me, then I will say, as they sa}'^, that scarfs are necessary, and not flags of pride." — Stubs, The Anatomy of Abuses, 1585, p. 42. * " Her chiefest pride is in the multitude of her suitors, and by them she gains; for one serves to draw on another, and with one at last she shoots out another, as boys do pellets in eldern guns." — Sis Thomas OvEEBUKY, Characters. An Ordinary Widow. ^ " Thy tinnen chariot, shod with burning bosses. Through twice six signs in twice six twelve months crosses." — Sylvestee, Du Bartas. Fourth Day of the First Week. "^ " A pair oiyarnen stocks to keep the cold away." — TuEBEViLLE, Letter out of Muscovy. " "She hath already put on her wispen garland." — G. Haevey, Pierce's Supererogation, Archaica, vol. 2, p. 149. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 21 found. It is only in the Supplement to Richardson that ' stonen' has for the first time made its appearance. I must class under this rubric words which appear in our Dictionaries as subsisting only in one part of speech, when indeed they are two or more. Thus they have ' a snag,' but not ' to snag,'^ — Todd, indeed, has the word, but as provincial, and giving no example of it. 'To snig,'^ (another form of the word) is entirely wanting. They have ' cinder,' but not, with Gascoigne, ' to cinder j'^ ' ignoble,' but not, with Lord Bacon, ' to ignoble ;'* * unactive,' but not ' to unactive.'^ And then, reversing the case, we find in them 'to cancel,' but not 'a cancel,"^ with Jeremy Taylor; 'to strut,' and 'a strut,' while 'strut,'^ as an adjective, is wanting; so, too, is ' diary ;'^ they have 'pleasant,' but not *« pleasant'^ = a buflbon. The omis- sions in this kind are indeed innumerable. I might have found a fitter opportunity for noticing, yet, * " Beware of snagging and snarling at God's secrets." — Rogebs, Naaman the Syrian, p. 14 ; cf. p. 291. ' " Others are so dangerously worldly, snigging and biting, usurers, hard and oppressing." — lb. id. p. 211. ' " where sword and cindring flame Consume as much as earth and air may frame." —The Fruits of Wars. * " Ignohling many shores and points of land by shipwreck." — A Discourse in praise of Queen Elizabeth. * " The fatness of their soil so stuck by their sides, it unactived them for foreign adventures." — Fullee, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine y b. 2, c. 10. * " Whose spirit desires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the body, till the state of separation calls it forth into a fair hberty." — Life of Christ, pt. 3, sect. 13, § 9. 7 " He beginneth now to return with his belly strut and full." — Holland, Ammianu^ Marcellinus, p. 213. ^ " The offer of a usurpation, though it was but as a diary ague." — Bacon, Letters, 83. * " They bestow their silver on courtesans, ^Zea*aw^5, and flatterers." —Holland, Plutarch, p. 169. " Ridiculous jesters and pleasants." — Id. ib. p. 106. 22 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN rather than not notice at all, I will notice here that, while we have a vast company of energetic words, formed as ' telltale/ ' spitfire/ ' spendthrift/ still current among us, a far larger company has past out of use, and of these many remain to this day unnoted in our Dictionaries. I instance the following : ^ getnothing,^^ ' swillbowV^ ' pickpenny,'^ ' nipfarthing,^^ ^turntippet/^ Richardson indeed has ^ to turn tippet,' but not the noun. III. Our Dictionaries do not always take sufficient care to mark the period of the rise of words, and where they have set, of their setting. The length of life which belongs to difierent words is very difierent, some describing much larger arcs than others. There are those which rose wdth the first rise of the language, and which, we may confidently prophesy, will always remain above the horizon. Others, rising as early, have already sunk and disappeared. Others rising later, will yet, so far as we can judge, continue so long as it continues. Others, again, describe far lesser arcs than any of these ; rising at a comparatively late period, they are already lost to our sight again ; they lived only the life of some single man ; or, it may be, used only once by him, their rising and their setting was at the same instant of time. But for all this, if their author and proposer was ^ " Every getnotJiing is a thief, and laziness is a * stolen water.' " — Adams, The Devil's Banquet, 1614, p. 76. ^ " Wantonness was never such a swillhowl of ribaldry." — G. Haevey, Fierce s Supererogation, Archaica, vol. 2, p. 141. ^ " He [the Pope] sending out and dispersing these birds of his to be his hungry picJcpennies throughout the whole pasturage of the empire." — H. Moke, Mystery of Iniquity, b. 2, c. 9, § 8. ^ " I would thee not a nipfarthing. Nor yet a niggard have : Wilt thou, therefore, a drunkard be, A dingthrift and a knave P" — Deant, The Satires of Horace, Sat i. ^ " The priests, for the most part, were doublefaced, turntippets, and flatterers." — Cbanmee, Confutation of Unwritten Verities. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 23 aujrthing better than one of that rabble of scribblers vvIk) hang on the skirts of literature, doing their worst to profane and degrade it and language which is its vehicle, these words should not on this account the less find place among those archives of a language which it is the business of a Dictionary to preserve. Now these arcs, wider or narrower, which words describe, are well worthy of being measured, so far as they come within the scope of our vision; and our complaint is that adequate care has not been bestowed on this matter. It is in every case desirable that the first authority for a word's use in the language which occurs should be ad- duced ; that the moment of its entrance into it, (that is, into the written language, for this only comes under our cognizance), the register of its birth, should thus be noted. Of course no Dictionary can accomplish this completely. Every lexicographer must be content to be often set right here, and to have it shown that earlier authority existed for a word than that which he assumed the earliest, till thus by repeated corrections something of an approach to complete accuracy in this matter is attained. But I doubt whether Johnson even so much as set this before him as an object desirable to be obtained. To a certain extent Todd evidently did so. Thus he has sometimes thought it worth his while expressly to note that authorities exist for a word earlier than any which Johnson has quoted; see for in- stance under the words, * financier,' ' canaille,' ' privateer.' Richardson has accomplished far more than either in this matter; though, strangely enough, he sometimes goes back from the vantage ground which his predecessors had already occupied, and satisfies himself with a later authority, when they had furnished him ready to hand with an earlier, and therefore a better. It cannot be brought as any charge against him, the first deliberate and consistent worker in this field, that he has left much in it for those who come after him to accomplish. For 24 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN this is a work, as I have said, in which every one who engages will have for a long time to come to submit to innumerable corrections from those who succeed him. To bring a few instances in proof, — one might suppose from Richardson that the word ' scoundrel' first came up in the eighteenth century, for the first authority which he gives for it is Swift ; and in discussing its etymology he says, " the instances of its usage are so modern, that it seems difficult to connect it with an Anglo-Saxon origin." Johnson has here the advantage of him; for he traces it back as far as Butler {Hudihras) ; but, in fact, ^ scoundrel' is much older than this, being found not merely in Beau- mont and Fletcher, but in Warner's Albion's England^ which was first published in 1 58 6. Take another example. Whatever merit there may be in the word 'witticism,' Dryden fancied he might claim for himself. " Pardon," he exclaims, as he uses it, " a new word ;"^ and Todd explicitly, the others implicitly, allow his claim to have coined it. But so far from the word issuing first from his mint, as thus he implies it to have done, Milton had employed it some twenty years before.^ Our Dictionaries would leave us to suppose that ' com- mittee' arose about the period of our great Civil Wars ; but from Holland's Livi/y^ published in 1600, we may learn that it was current nearly half a century before. Of ' econo- mize' Richardson observes, '^ the verb is now in common use," implying that it is quite of modern coinage; and Todd speaks of it as "of very recent usage;" — an entire * "That scoundrel or this counterfeit." — B. 6, c. 31. ^ Preface to his State of Innocence. ^ " Tis no great wonder that such a three-lettered man as you (Fur a Thief) should make such a witticism on three letters." — Defence of the English Peojple, c. 11. ^ " The committees of the captives had audience granted them in the senate-house by the Dictator." — p. 468. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 'Zo mistake ! it is as old as Milton.^ ' Apostate/ or ' apostata/ which form of the word lasted long, did not first come in about the time of the Reformation, as all our Dic- tionaries might lead us to conclude, but is in fact as old as Piers Vloughman? But if it be thus desirable to note in every case, so far as this is possible, the first appearance of a word, then all those tokens which will sometimes cleave to words for awhile, and indicate their recent birth, ought also to be diligently noted. None are more important in this aspect than what one may fitly call " marks of imperfect natu- ralization." Many words, as is familiar to us all, have only by degrees made themselves a home among us : denizens now, they were at first strangers and foreigners, and bore plainly on their fronts that they were so ; the foreign ter- mination which for a while they retained, but now have dropped, being commonly that which betrayed their alien character, their as yet imperfect adoption among us. It is clear that in no way is the date of a word's incoming likely to be more eftectually marked than by the marking and adducing of passages in which it still wears its foreign aspect ; not to say that in other ways the history of a word is incomplete unless this be done. There has hitherto been comparatively little attention bestowed upon this point by any of our lexicographers, and, on the whole, less by Richardson than by his predecessors. They show us in- deed, either one or all, how ' pyramis' and ' pyramides' went before 'pyramid' and 'pyramids,' 'statua' before ' statue,' ' preludium ' before ' prelude,' ' caricatura' before ' caricature ;' that ' phantasma,' ' classis,' ' syntaxis,' pre- ' " [Meu] under tyranny and servitude, are wanting that power which is the root and source of all liberty, to dispose and oeconomize in the land which God has given them." — The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, ad hnem. - *' And whoso passed that point Was apostata in the ordre." — Line 667, 8. n 26 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN ceded ^ phantasm/ ^ class/ ' syntax/ with something more in the same kind ; but a vast number of examples^ passed over by them^ still remains to be noticed. Of these I propose to adduce a few. I will notice first some Greek immigrations, the time of whose incoming may in this way be pretty accurately noted ; but which have either escaped the attention of our lexico- graphers, or have seemed to them unworthy of note. We should scarcely suspect 'biography' to be so recent as it is, were it not for the fact that Dryden continually uses ' biographia/i ' Cynosura/^ employed by Hacket and Henry More, preceded ^ cynosure / ' demagogi,'^ employed also by Hacket, went before ' demagogues.' Bearing out the novelty of this last word in the middle of the seventeenth century, let me just remind you that Milton in his Eikovo- KXd(TTrjQ finds in the use of ' demagogue'"* in the Icon Basi' like J — " this goblin word," as he calls it, — an argument that King Charles could not have been author of the work. ' Chasma'^ is employed by Henry More, long before ' chasm' was naturalized in our tongue. ' Heros,'^ too, is in constant ^ " JBiographia, or the history of particular men's lives, comes next to be considered." — Life of Plutarch. ^ " The Countess of Buckingham was the cynosura that all the Papists steered by." — Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. i. p. 171 ; of. Heney Moee, Immortality of the Soul, b. 3, c. 17, § 7. * " Those noted demagogi were but hirelings, and triobulary rheto- ricians." — Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. i. p. 175. ^ His words are so curious that, though quoted by Richardson and referred to by Todd, I will append them here: — "Setting aside the affrightment of this goblin word [demagogue], for the King, by his leave, cannot coin English as he could money to be current, and it is believed this wording was above his known style and orthography, and accuses the whole composure to be conscious of some other author."' — § 4. ^ " Observe how handsomely and naturally that hideous and unpro- portionate chasma betwixt the predictions in the eleventh chapter of Daniel and the twelfth is in this way filled up with matters of weighty concernment." — Mystery of Iniquity, b. 2, c. 10, § 8. * "But to return to the description of this heavenly heros: A sharp- edged sword is said to go out of his mouth." — Ih., b. 2, c. 14, § 6. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 27 use by him, and the plural is 'heroes/ a trisyllable, in Spenser. ' Idioma^^ occurs in the Ileliconia, also in Drayton; 'paral- lelo^rammon'2 in Holland, 'extasis'^ in Burton, 'prosodia'* in Drayton, 'zoophyton'^ in Henry More, 'epitheton'^ in Foxe. I will now pass on to the Latin, dealing with all as such, whose terminations are such, and, Greek though they may be, have come to us through the Latin. ' Chylus^^ is fre- quent in Bacon, and, if the examples of 'chyle' in our Dic- tionaries are the earliest, preceded it by at least half a century. Jackson uses ' abyssus/^ Baxter and Henry More 'archiva /^ "Worthington ' diatriba ; '^° Jeremy Taylor ' expansum;*^^ * " Impartial judge of all save present state, Truth's idioma of the things are past." — Heliconiay vol. 3, p. 461. ' " Suppose, then, there be a figure set down in form of a tile, called parallelogrammon, with right angles A, B, C, D." — Plutarch, p. 1036. * " In the same author is recorded Carolus Magnus* vision, an. 885, or cj?^a*/*, wherein he saw heaven and hell." — Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. 3, § 4, I. 2. ■* " Every grammarian in this land hath learned his prosodia, and already knows all this art of numbers." — Apology for Rhyme. * " A zoophyton may be rightly said to have a middle excellency betwixt an animal and a plant." — Mystery of Iniquity, b. i, c. 9, § 3. * "Alter the epithetons [i\ie&Q epithetons are * horrible,' * heretical,* * damnable,' and the like, applied to the doctrines of the Reformation] and I will subscribe." — Book of Martyrs, Second Examination of Julius Palmer. ' " Mists, smoke, vapours, chylus in the stomach." — Natural History, cent. ix. § 837. ^ " This is a depth or abyssus which may not be dived into." — Com- mentaries on the Creed, b. 11, c. 19, § 6. ^ " The Christians were able to make good what they asserted by appealing to these records, kept in the Eoman archiva." — H. Moee, On Godliness, b. 7, c. 12, § 2. ^^ " That excellent diatriba upon St. Mark." — Preface to Medes Works, p. I . " " The light of the world in the morning of creation was spread abroad like a curtain, and dwelt nowhere, but filled the expansum with a dis- semination great as the unfoldings of the air's looser garment, or the wilder fringes of the fire." — The Miracles of the Divine Mercy; cf. Heney Mobe, Mystery of Iniquity, b. i, c. 5, § 7. 28 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN Fuller ' interstitium /^ Chillingworth ' intervalla ;'- Henry More 'machina/^ Culverwell ' philtrum j'^ Burton 'spec- trum.'^ ' Mummy/ not a Latin word, but coming to us through the low Latin, appears for some time as ' mummia,' still wearing its Latin dress. ^ Sometimes we can only tell by aid of the plural that the word was once regarded as foreign, though now it is so regarded no more. Thus ' phalanx'^ in the singular would tell us nothing, because this is the form which we have ultimately adopted ; but the plural ' phalanges,' instead of 'phalanxes,' leaves no doubt that he who employed it regarded the word as a Greek one still. ' Cento'^ in like manner is not indicative, but ' centones' is ; we may say the same of ' bisontes,'^ as compared with 'bison.' ' Idea'^^ leaves us doubtful, but 'idese' is decisive. 'Noctambalo,' which * " There was an interstitium or distance of seventy years between the destruction of Solomon's and erection of Zorobabel's temple." — A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. i, b. 3, c. 6. ' " They conceive that if they should have the good fortune to be taken away in one of these intervalla, one of these sober moods, they should certainly be saved." — Nine Sermons, p. 11. ^ " Three such contextures shall one fatal day Ruin at once, and the world's machina. Upheld so long, rush into atoms rent." — On Godliness, p. 42. ^ " Lucretius, a Roman of very eminent parts, which yet were much abated by aphiltrum that was given him." — Light of Nature, c. 17. ^ " Lavater puts solitariness a main cause of such spectrums or appa- ritions." — Anatomy of Melancholy , part 3, § 4, i, 2. ^ Webstee, Vittoria Coromhona, act i, sc. i. 7 " Aforetime they had their battallions thick and close together like the Macedonian ^/m/awye^." — Holland, Livy, p. 286. ^ " Cew^owe* are pieces of cloth of divers colours. . . . Metaphorically it is a poem patched out of other poems by ends of verses." — L. Vives, Augustine s City of God, b. 17, c. 15, note. ^ " Neither had the Greeks any experience of those neat or buffles, called uri or bisontes" — Holland, Pliny, pt. 2, p. 323. '° " Socrates and Plato suppose that these idece be substances separate and distinct from matter." — Id., Plutarch, p. 813. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 29 for a long time did the duty which ' somnambulist* does now, and was thoroughly naturalized in Arbuthnot's time, for he speaks of ' noctambuloes' (see Richardson), was plainly far from so being in Donne's, for whom the plural of it is ' noctambulones/^ And to take example of a single Italian word ; ' bravo'^ being the form in which we have ultimately made this word our own, has no information for us ; but where ' bravi,' and not ' bravoes,' appear as the plural, this marks it for him who so used it as Italian still. It must at the same time be freely acknowledged that these ar# not perfectly infallible signs ; that one writer \vi\\ still deal with a word as a stranger, and lead us to suppose it so, while another, who wrote earlier, had already treated it as an homeling. Thus I find ' depositum'^ used by more writers than one, and that a considerable time after Lord Bacon had employed 'deposit.* Some, too, persisted in constantly using ' hostia,'* long after ' host' was completely adopted in the language. There are many other ways nearly related to this one, by which the date of a word's first appearance may be approxi- mately gained; passages by aid of which we may pretty confidently affirm that, at the time they were written, the word was not in existence : these also I should desire to see gathered in. Thus if Sir Walter Raleigh speaks of " strange visions which are also called panici terrores"'^ it is tolerably plain that the word 'panic' was not yet recognized when he wrote. Or take this quotation from Hacket's Life of Williams :^ " When wars broke out, they * " They say that our noctamhulones, men that walk in their sleep, will wake if they be called by their names." — Sermon 46, p. 467. ' " Hired fencers, called bravi." — Moeison, Itinerary, pt. 2, p. 25. ' " They [precious souls] are laid up as a rich depositum in the hand of a Saviour." — Culveewell, Tlie Worth of Souls; cf. Rogees, Naaman the Syrian, To the Reader. ^ Thus Moeison, Itinerary, pt. 3, p. 32, and passim. * History of the Worlds b. 3, c. 6, § i. « Pt. 2, p. 182. 30 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN crept out of their crannies like the cimici in the houses of Italy, out of rotten bedsteads ;" — can I doubt that the ugly English equivalent for ' cimici' had not yet obtained the name by which we know it now ? The word indeed existed, but not our present appropriation of it.^ Once more — I meet in a book published in 1659/ the following passage : "But all these owned a irokvQuafxog, a plurality of gods/' I am not very rash in concluding that in 1659 *^ poly theism' had not yet found its way into the language. Or again if I find ^ acme' written in Greek cha- racters, as I do in South, in Culver well,^ and again in Phillips' excellent Preface to his New World of JFordSj^ if in addition to this I find it also explained, I have right to assume, that in the middle of the seventeenth century ^ acme' was not yet naturalized in our tongue, although the time of its naturalization could not be far off". Or, once more, if I notice that at a certain epoch of the language not one but many writers employ ' individuum,'^ where we should speak of an ' individual,' I am justified in concluding that however, as an adjective, it may have been for some time current among us, it had not gained an independent ex- istence, and a noun substantive's right to stand alone. Bacon's use of it as equivalent to 'atom' is merely technical. Neither ought a Dictionary to neglect what one may call the negative assistances (they are often no more than hints). ^ We have further proof of this in such a passage as the following : — " Do not all as much and more wonder at God's rare workmanship in the ant, the poorest bug that creeps, as in the biggest elephant?" — RoGEES, Naaman the Syrian, p. 74. * Gell, Essay toward the Amendment of the English Translu' tion of the Bible, p. 336. 3 The Light of Nature, c. 4. ■* " The Latin language was judged not to have come to its aKiir}, or flourishing height of elegance, until the age in which Cicero lived." — 3rd ed. 1 67 1. * " He cannot possibly mean that every individuum should give his suffrage." — Culveewell, The Light of Nature, c. 4. OUR ENGLISH DICTIOXARIES. 31 by a careful observation, and judicious use of which, it will very often be possible to fix a time when some word certainly did not as yet exist; while with the period of its non- existence in this way firmly established, and the field of inquiry thus effectually narrowed, there will be little diffi- culty in designating the exact time when it first showed itself in the language. For example, if I find a writer treating of a matter which presents every inducement to employ a certain word, and notwithstanding this, in no single instance employing it, I argue with more or less confidence that the word was not then in beingr. Thus if I read page after page in Holland's Fliny, where every temptation exists to employ the word ' sculptor,' for the author whom he is translating, is treating at great length, and one by one, of the famous sculptors of antiquity, while instead of this he constantly employs ' imager,' I gather not a certainty, but a very strong conviction, that ^ sculptor,' at the time he wrote, was not in being ; as I am persuaded from other evidence it was not, nor till the middle of the seventeenth century. Dryden is the first authority for it in our Dictionaries, though earlier than he might be adduced. Again, if I find various devices resorted to by the writers at the beginning of that same century to express a tract of land almost surrounded by sea, so that they employ ' biland,'^ ' demi-isle/ ' demi-island,'^ I am able without much hesitation to affirm that 'peninsula' was not yet ackowledged to be English. The use of ' engastrimyth' makes the existence of ventriloquist at the same time, I will not say impossible, but certainly improbable. All passages yielding hints of this kind should be sedulously watched for and preserved. ^ " From hence, a great way between, is that hiland, or demi-islh, which the Sindi inhabit." — Holland, Ammianus MarcelUnus, p. 200. " In the Eed Sea there lieth a great demi-island named Cadara, so far out into the sea that it maketh a huge gulf under the wind." — JJ. PZm^, pt. i,p. 235. 32 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN Yet here, too, it must be freely acknowledged that all such conclusions are open to error; as it must ever be, where the proofs are rather negative than positive. Thus, if frequently meeting with the word ^ counterpoison ' in the writings of Holland, which I have quoted so often (Richard- son has it not, and Johnson only a late example of it), I should therefore conclude that ^ antidote' did not yet exist ; his own pages would be sufficient to convince me of error. The employment of that excellent Saxon phrase, 'ear-shrift,' by our early Reformers (it is not in our Dictionaries), might easily tempt us to believe that ' auricular confession' was of later invention, which, however, is by no means the case. I have dwelt so long on the importance of noticing the rise of words, and the helps by which this may be done, that I must be very brief in respect of their setting. Yet, if a Dictionary should thus carefully indicate the moment of their first appearance above the horizon, it should, in case of those again withdrawn from our sight, note with the same diligence the moment of this disappearance; giving, that is, or endeavouring to give, in the case of each obsolete word, the latest instance of its employment; that so, as we saw it in the cradle, we may also follow it, where dead, to the grave. When I say that this is desirable, that this is to be aimed at, it must of course be allowed at once that it is difficult, nay, impossible ever to affirm that we have adduced the latest instance of a word's use. It is always possible that a later may be produced. Still, that which may be regarded as the ideal perfection in this matter may be approached nearer and nearer ; and as long as passages are producible later than the latest hitherto ad- duced, this ideal perfection is not approached as nearly as it might be. Here, too, it may very well be a question whether Johnson set this before him at all; or, indeed, there can be no question that he did not. Neither has Todd concerned himself for the last use of words so much as for the first. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 83 Richardson has made it much more an object. Still in this matter also of watching a word^s final exit much remains to be accomplished. Thus, the latest example, indeed the only one, which Richardson gives of ^unease' (the word is not at all in Johnson), is from Chaucer. We might thus be led to conclude that ' unease' had vanished out of the language at a very early date ; but it occurs as late as the middle of the seventeenth century,^ nearly three centuries later than the date wTiich he seems to assign to it. Many other words he would leave us to conclude had a briefer existence than was actually the case. They have perished, it is true; but still they were not so short-lived as his quotations would impl}-. Out of a large number of such, I will only cite one or two. ' Unidle'^ (not in Todd) , one might suppose from Richardson, had not outlived Chaucer: it was still good English in the time of Sidney. Of ' unlusty' (in like manner not in Todd), no later authority occurs in Richardson than Gower : the word is employed by Tyndale and by Holland.^ There are some who perhaps may urge that all this is trivial and of little importance. I cannot agree with them. A word's birth may not be as important as a man's birth ; but a biography which should omit to tell us when he was born whose life it professes to record, would not, in my mind, be a whit more incomplete in its kind than is the article in a lexicon which makes no attempt to fix, where there are any means for doing so, the date of a word's first appearance in the language. And as with birth, so also with death. Where a word is extinct, not to note, where this is possible, the time of its extinction, seems in its way as serious an omission as in the life of a man not to tell us the ' " What an unease it was to be troubled with the humming of so many gnats." — Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. 2, p. 88. ' " For me, I do nature unidle know." — Astrojphel and Stella, 26. ' " He [the hippopotamus] waxeth unlusty and slow." — Ammianus Marcellinus, p. 213. D 84 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN time, when that can be ascertained, when that life was ended. IV. Our Dictionaries might note more accurately than they do, and illustrate by suitable quotations, the earlier uses which words have now left behind them, the successive modifications of meaning through which they have passed. It is one of the primary demands which we make upon a Dictionary, that it should thus present us with the history of words, the significant phases of meaning through which they have travelled. It was a remark of Coleridge, that you might often learn more from the history of a word than from the history of a campaign ; and this is true. Johnson is very faulty here; perhaps in nothing more so. Nothing is commoner with him than to take the last meaning at which a word has arrived, the ultimate result, and to put this first and foremost, either quite over-passing, or placing last, the earlier uses which alone render the latter intelligible. The difficulties and confusions which are thus introduced into any attempt at an accurate and historical study of the lan- guage are scarcely capable of exaggeration. Turn, for instance, to the first word in which it was at all easy for him to go wrong, the word ' to abandon / all the meanings which he gives, or which his citations bear out, are secondary or tertiary ; the primary he does not once touch ; and thus fails to put ^abandon' in any intelligible relation with ' bann,^ ' bannura,^ which lies at the foundation of it. Richardson has bestowed far more attention on this part of his task than his predecessors, and not seldom the series of quotations by which he illustrates the successive phases of meaning through which a word has passed is singularly happy. Still, with all his superiority, I do not find him always careful in this matter to embody and preserve what his forerunners had won, sometimes going back from a point which they had already attained. Thus I find notices in Johnson or Todd, with good illustrative examples, of the following uses of words, which I look for vainly in him; ^femi- OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 35 nine' in the sense of effeminate; 'thought' in that of anxiety^ (important as clearing ourTranslators from a charge of mistranslation at Matt. vi. 25, 27, often brought against them) ; * vivacity' in that of longevity, ' misery' in that of stinginess, ' temperament' in that of ' temperamentum' or compromise, ' formality' in its strictest logical significance. But these and other omissions must not rob him of the honour of having here done much, although still leaving much to be accomplished by those who come after. I will proceed by quotations, which, if few, shall yet be sufficient, to make good my assertions. I cannot then find that any of our Dictionaries take notice of ' metal' used in the sense of the Latin ' metallum' or mine, which is yet a favourite employment of the word with Jeremy Taylor.2 In like manner he employs 'symbol'^ in the sense which the Greek GvfiftoXov sometimes had, namely, the contribution which each person at a pic-nic throws into the common stock. 'Firmament,'* too, he uses, and Bacon as well, in the sense which anpitsjua has in profane Greek, in Aristotle's sense, not that of the Septuagint. Our Dictionaries do not notice 'sure'^ in the sense of affianced; * Let me add a still better example of this : " In five hundred years only two queens have died in childbirth. Queen Catharine Parr died rather of thought." — Tracts during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, Sotners' Tracts, \o\. i, p. 172. ' " It was impossible to live without our king, but as slaves live, that is such who are civilly dead, and condemned to metals." — Ductor Dubitantium, Epistle Ded. ' " Christ hath finished his own sufferings for expiation of the world, yet there are portions that are behind of the sufferings of Christ, which must be filled up by his body, the Church, and happy are they that put in the greatest symbol; for in the same measure you are par- takers of the sufferings of Christ, in the same shall ye be also of the consolation." — The Faith and Patience of the Saints. ■* " Custom is the sanction or the firmament of the law." — Apples of Sodom. 5 " The King was sure to Dame Elizabeth Lucy, and her husband before God."— Sib T. Moee, History of King Richard III. 86 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN nor 'clumsy'^ in its early sense of stiff with cold; nor ' deplored*^ in the Latin sense of ' deploratus/ namely, given over by physicians; nor ' desired'^ in the sense of regretted ; nor ^penury'* in that of penuriousness ; nor ^ spinster'^ in that of woman of ill life_, sent therefore, or liable to be sent, to the spinning house. None of them have noticed that a 'whirlpooP^ is not the name merely of a ^oo^ which wliirh ships, but also of a fish which wliirls j)ooU. They are altogether astray about the meaning of ^ lumber,^ which is properly the ' Lombard^s^ or pawnbroker's shop,"^ and then the goods deposited there. ^ ^ " The Carthaginians followed the enemies in chase as far as Trebia, and there gave over, and returned to the camp so clumsy and frozen [ita torpentes gelu in castra rediere] as scarcely they felt the joy of their victory." — Holland, Livy, p. 425. 2 "Physicians do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the patient after the disease is deplored; whereas in my judgment they ought, both to acquire the skill, and to give the attendances for the facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of death." — Bacon, Advancement of Learning, b. 2. ^ " He [Jehoram] reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired^ — 2 Chron. xxi. 20, AutJiorized Version. " She shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies." — J. Tayloe, The Marriage Ring. ^ " God sometimes punishes one sin with another; pride with adultery, drunkenness with murder, penury with oppression, irreligion with blasphemy." — Id. The Faith and Patience of the Saints. ^ " Many would never be indicted spinsters were they spinsters, nor come to so public and shameful punishments, if painfully employed in that vocation." — Fullee* Worthies ofJEngland, Kent; cf. Beaumont and Fletchee, The Prophetess, Act 3, sc. i. ^ " The Indian sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are ; among which the whales, and whirlpools called balaense, take up in length as much as four acres or arpens of land." — Holland, Pliny, p. 235. "The ork, whirlpool, whale, or huffing physeter." — Sylvestee, Du Bartas, First Day of the First Week. ^ " They put up all the little plate they had in the lumber, which is pawning it, till the ships came." — Lady Mueeay, Lives of George Baillie and Lady Grisell Baillie. ^ " And by an action falsely laid in trover, The lumher for their proper goods recover." — Butlee, Upon Critics. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 37 V. Our Dictionaries pay comparatively little attention to the distinction of synonymous words. It would manifestly be desirable to see included in their pages all the best and aptest passages which serve to distinguish any word from the synonyms with which it is likely to be confounded, either by felicitous opposition, or by avowed discrimination, and which assign to each the province which is properly its own. No good Latin Dictionary would omit Cicero's dis- tinction between 'prudentia' and ' sapientia,'^ 'furor* and ' insania,'^ ' malitia* and ' vitiositas.'^ And in like manner what a remarkable feature in the new German Dictionary now being published by the two Grimms, are the frequent and laborious discussions on synonymous words, with illus- trative quotations. They are in almost every case of singular interest ; as for instance when they treat on the difference between 'Aar' and 'Adler;' 'Antlitz' and 'Angesicht;' 'Becher,' 'Glas' and 'Kelch;' 'Butter,' 'Schmalz' and ' Anke/ 'Degen' and ' Schwert.' But this subject is in our own Dictionaries seldom even touched upon, and still more rarely is it sufficiently handled. I may, indeed, be deceived, for this is a point more difficult to bring to the proof than other assertions which I have made ; but my impression is, that the quotations chosdn for their bearing on this matter are few and scanty, which is the more to be regretted, as we are greatly deficient in a comprehensive work on English synonyms ; the two best which we have, that of Taylor of Norwich, and that edited by Archbishop Whately, making no pretence to exhaust the subject. Yet it would not be very difficult to bring together a large and instructive collection of materials bearing on this subject, and they might constitute a feature of no less interest in our Dictionaries, than they do in that of the Grimms. Coleridge is eminently rich in such passages, and would yield a large harvest of them to any who would » De Off. i. 43. = Tusc. iii. 5. 11. ' DeN. D. iii. 30. 38 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN be at the pains to seek them. Thus what Dictionary would not be a gainer by the citation of those passages from him in which he distinguishes between * analogy^ and 'meta- phor/^ 'fanaticism' and 'enthusiasm/^ or^ to take earlier examples, by that in one of Barrow's Sermons, in which he draws the line of demarcation between 'detraction' and 'slander?' What clearness of insight well selected quotations of the kind I ask, would give into the exact force and value of words, which being nearly equivalent, are continually in danger of being accounted to be wholly so ; and bor- dering closely on one another, are liable to have their several limits confused. For instance, none of our Dic- tionaries trace clearly the line of demarcation between ' docile' and ' docible,' treating them as merely convert- ible words ; and so do most of the authors whom they quote as employing them. But take this brief passage from Hacket :^ "Whom Nature hath made docile, it is injurious to prohibit him from learning anything that is docible f^ and what possibility is there in any mind of confusing them any more, or of missing the fact that ' docile' is able to learn, and ' docible' able to he learned ? Or take the words 'safe' and 'secure,' and adduce, under one or other of them, as fixing their distinction, this passage from Jeremy Taylor : " We cannot endure to be disturbed or awakened from our pleasing lethargy, for we care not to be safe, but to be secure-, not to escape hell, but to live pleasantly/'^ and how excellently would a quotation such as this bring out the distinction — namely, that in ' safe' we have the objec- tive fact of freedom from peril expressed ; in ' secure' the subjective feeling and belief, true or untrue, of the same. And before leaving this subject of synonyms, let me ^ Aids to Reflection, p. 198. 1825. ^ Literary Hemains, vol. 2, p. 365. 3 Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. i, p. 28. * On Slander and Flattery, Serm, 24. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 89 further note how desirable it would be that all important passages should be cited, which discuss iu any way a word^s relations to other words, not merely in its own language, but in any other. No Latin dictionary would pass by Cicero's observations on ' vultus,' and the superiority of it to any Greek corresponding word, in that it sets out the countenance as the index of the mind, which, he affirms, no Greek one does ;^ nor those in which he traces a like superiority in ' divinatio' over fiavTiKi],^ in ' convivium' over (rvfiTTocriov^ nor would fail to quote what he says of ' ineptus,' and the causes to which he traces, in such high Roman fashion, the absence of any corresponding word in the Greek.* Many such passages, unregistered as yet, our English literature must possess. VI. Many passages are passed by which might be use- fully adduced in illustration of the first introduction, ety- mology, and meaning of words. A good dictionary will mark itself by such happy quotations. There are passages for one cause or another so classical, in respect of certain words, that it would be a manifest defect if they were omitted ; such, for instance, as that upon ' livery' in Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, given in both our Dictionaries. Indeed, very much in this kind has been brought together already, but much more remains to be done. He would be utterly unreasonable who should urge as a fault that all has not here been accomplished. The literature of our language is so vast, so far exceeding the compass of any one man's power to embrace it all, that innumerable pre- cious quotations must escape the single-handed student; even when he inherits the labours of others, who, single- handed as himself, have wrought in this almost boundless field. Although, therefore, in no spirit of fault-finding, I may still say that I should fain see cited in our Dictionaries, * Be Legg. i, 9, 27. ' Be Divin. i, i. ^ De Senect. 13. * Be Orat. 2, 4, 17. 40 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN and in a perfect, one there would be cited, all such passages as the following : — a. Passages which give an account of, or implicitly serve to mark, the first introduction of a word into the language, or first use of it in an entirely new sense. As no good Latin Dictionary would omit, under ' favor,^ at least a reference to Quintilian^s quotation from Cicero^s Zetiers, marking the date of its first use, under 'unio^ that from the elder Pliny,^ which notes the exact moment at which it was first applied to pearls in which all the higher perfec- tions of the pearl were centred and met, so neither ought our Dictionaries to omit passages of a similar value. This from Heylin's Animadversions on Fuller's Church History^ marks the exact moment when ^ plunder^ entered into the language : " Plunder^ both name and thing, was unknown in England till the beginning of the war, and the war began not till Sept., An. 1642.^' Up to the middle of the seven- teenth century our good writers use ' self- homicide,^ never 'suicide.' The following ineffectual protest against the word marks pretty nearly the date of its introduction : " Nor less to be exploded is the word suicide, which may as well seem to participate of sus a sow, as of the pronoun suij'^ In Evelyn's Biary^ we have a notice that ' opera' is about to establish itself in our language, perhaps the first appear- ance of it therein; the quotation at any rate is earlier than any which our Dictionaries furnish : " Bernini, a Florentine sculptor, architect, and poet, a little while before my coming to the city gave a public o^era {for so they call shoivs of that kind) wherein he painted the scenes, &c." The word ' negoce,' which by the way is not in any of our Dictionaries, as neither is * negotious,'^ nor ' negotious- ^ Hist. Nat. 9. 35, 56. 2 p 1(^5^ ^ Phillips, New World of Worlds, 3rd ed. 1671, Preface. * Rome, Nov. 19, 1644. * " Some servants, if they be set about what they like, are very nimble and negotiousy — Rogees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 309. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 41 ness/^ has failed to gain a footing in tl^ language ; yet, consistently with the principles everywhere laid'dArn in these pages, I should desire to see it noted, and with it Bentley's defence of it against the cavils of Boyle. It is a curious passage : " The words in my book which he excepts against are commentitious, repudiate, concedey aliene, vernacular, timid, negoce, putid, and idio^n ; every one of which were in print before I used them, and most of them before I was born. Why may we not say negoce from nego- tium, as well as commerce from commercium, and palace from palatium ? Has not the French nation been beforehand with us in espousing it ? and have not we negotiate and nego- tiation, words which grew upon the same root, in the com- monest use ?"^ /3. Again, I would fain see cited the chief passages in our literature, as many as occur, which consciously discuss, or unconsciously reveal, the etymology of a word, the rationale of a name. Here, too, there is a gleaning for later labourers quite equal, I should imagine, to the harvest which the earlier have gathered. Thus, under ' furlong,' I would not despise such a passage as the following : " A furlong comes next to be considered, so called quasi furrow^ long, being so much as a team in England plougheth going forward, before they return back again."^ Once more — we are all aware why the ' wallnut' is so called ; still under the word this passage, again from Fuller, might fitly be cited ; " Some difficulty there is in cracking the name thereof. Why wallnuts, having no affinity to a wall, whose substantial trees need to borrow nothing thence for their support. . . . The truth is, Gual or Wall to the old Dutch signifieth strange or exotic (whence Welsh, that is, foreigners), these nuts being no natives of England or * " God needs not our negotiousness, or double diligence, to bring his matters to pass." — Id. ih. 606. * Preface to the Dissertation upon Phalaris, p. liv. ^ FuLLEB, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. i, b. i, c. 13. 42 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN Europe, and probably first fetched from Persia, because called Nux Persique in the French tongue/^^ ^Aureola/ though adopted at an early day into the lan- guage, and a word familiar to our old divines, is not in any of our Dictionaries. Let us, however, suppose it there, and it is evident that the following citation from Donne should accompany it : " Because in their translation, in the Vul- gate edition of the Roman Church, they [the Roman Catholics] find in Exodus xxv. 25, that word aureolanij Eacies coronam aureolam^ Thou shalt make a lesser crown of gold, out of this diminutive and mistaken word they have established a doctrine that, besides those coronae aurese, those crowns of gold, which are communicated to all the saints from the crown of Christ, some saints have made to themselves and produced out of their own extraordinary merits certain aureolaes, certain lesser crowns of their own. . . . And these aureolaes they ascribe only to three sorts of persons, to Virgins, to Martyrs, to Doctors."^ y. Where the subject matter is abstruse, or in any way difficult, I would fain see all quotations made which contain happy definitions or explanations. Here, too, not as imply- ing that very much has not been done, but simply as showing by a few examples how much remains to be done, I bring forward the following. Richardson, under 'instinct,^ has a rather poor definition of it from Beattie. Where, as in this case, a better is producible, it should clearly be pro- duced. This from Henry More appears to me a manifest improvement on that which Beattie has given : " That ^ Worthies of England, Surrey. 2 Sermon 73. — Let me here observe, as a curious phenomenon of French scholarship, and an evidence that such a quotation as this would not be superfluous, that Didron, in his really valuable book, Iconogra- phie Chretienne, p. 109, makes 'aureola' a diminutive of 'aura,' a breath, this ' aureola' being so called, as he informs us, from its airy- wavy character ; not to say that he is otherwise curiously astray on what the ' aureola' in Christian Art is, and what are its relations to the * nimbus,' OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 43 there is such a thing therefore as instinct in brute animals, I think is very plain ; that is to say, that there is an in- stigation or impetus in them to do such things without counsel, deliberation, or acquired knowledge, as according to our reason and best consultation, we cannot but approve to be fittest to be done. Which principle in general Scaliger seems to parallel to divine inspiration. Instinctus dicitur a Natura, sicut a Diis afflatus.''^ Richardson has only one quotation of a few lines from Hobbs, to illustrate ' common sense' (the others have none), a well-selected passage, if it had occupied a second or third place ; but, as the primary and only, failing to place the key to the true meaning of the word in the hands of the ordinaiy reader, who, if he thinks about the matter at all, almost inevitably assumes that 'common sense' is so called as being the sense common to all men who are not below the average intellect of mankind. Suppose this (it is again from Henry More) had also found place; it seems to me to tell, which that other does not, the story of the word : "That there is some particular or restrained seat of the common sense is an opinion that even all philosophers and physicians are agreed upon. And it is an ordinary com- parison amongst them, that the external senses and the common sense considered together are like a circle with five lines drawn from the circumference to the centre. Where- fore, as it has been obvious for them to find out particular organs for the external senses, so they have also attempted to assign some distinct part of the body to be an organ of the common sense ; that is to say, as they discovered sight to be seated in the eye, hearing in the ear, smelling in the nose, &c., so they conceived that there is some part of the body wherein seeing, hearing, and all other perceptions meet together, as the lines of a circle in the centre, and that there the soul does also judge and discern of the difference of the objects of the outward senses.''^ * Immortality/ of the Soul, b. 3, c. 13. ' Ih. b. 2, c. 7. 44 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN Let me instance one more example of what I would fain see clone. Here is the word ' goodnature/ Johnson and Richardson take no notice of it ; Todd defines it thus : " Kindness, habitual benevolence, the most pleasing quality that a man or woman can possess/' It is well known to every English scholar, certainly to every theological scholar, that by ^ goodnature' our great divines of the sixteenth and sev^enteenth centuries meant something quite different from this ; that the word played not an unimportant part in their statements of the relations between nature and grace ; they including in it everything which it is possible for a man to have without having the grace of God; very much the £i>0uia of Aristotle, the genial preparedness for the recep- tion of every high teaching. Suppose then that instead of the silence of Johnson and Richardson, and the weak babble of Todd, two or three such quotations as these had been appended to the word, the gain would have been considerable ; and first, this from Jeremy Taylor : " Good nature, being the relics and remains of that shipwreck which Adam made, is the proper and immediate disposition to holiness. When good nature is heightened by the grace of God, that which was natural becomes now spiritual.''^ But take in further explanation of good nature' this from Bishop Sanderson : " Good nature ! alas, where is it ? since Adam fell, there was never any such thing in rerum natura ; if there be any good thing in any man, it is all from grace. That thing which we use to call good nature is indeed but a subordinate means or instrument whereby God restraineth some men more than others from their birth and special constitution from sundry outrageous exorbitances, and so is a branch of this restraining grace whereof we now speak."^ YII. Our Dictionaries err in redundancy as well as ^ Sermon preached at the Funeral of Sir John Dalstone. ' Sermons, vol. i, p. 279. OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 45 defect. A Dictionary ought to know its own limits, not merely as to what it should include, but also what it should exclude. The fault may be as great of carelessly taking in foreign and extraneous matter, as of unduly rejecting that which properly belongs to it. Our early lexico- graphers, I mean those who preceded Johnson, from failing to recognize any proper limits to their work, from the desire to combine in it as many utilities as possible, present often the strangest medleys in the books which they have produced. These are not Dictionaries of words only, but of persons, places, things ; they are gazetteers, mythologies, scientific encyclopedias, and a hundred things more ; all, of course, most imperfectly, even according to the standard of knowledge of their own time, and with a selection utterly capricious of what they put in, and what they leave out. Nor can it be said that we have yet wholly overlived this error; some of the Dictionaries in authority among us are deeply tainted with it, and none are wholly unaffected by it. The subject is one which I am unwilling to pass wholly by. It may seem, indeed, hardly included in my argument, which being the de- ficiencies of our English Dictionaries, undertakes to deal with the too little in them rather than the too much. Still, as I have asked that they should open their doors wide to receive a large company of words which hitherto they have declined or neglected to entertain, not to speak of other charges which I have sought to put upon them, I feel that it will not be out of place to show how room may be made for these incomers into their rightful inheritance, namely, by the expulsion of others who are mere in- truders and interlopers. Were it necessary that oilr Dic- tionaries should grow considerably in bulk, through the taking in of much which hitherto they have not taken in, I should acquiesce in the necessity, even while I felt the inconvenience. But, in regard of most of them, there is no such necessity. Let them throw overboard that which 46 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN never had any claim to make part of their cargo,, and they will find room enough for the more precious wares which they are specially bound to convey. The most mischievous shape which this error assumes, consists in the drafting into the Dictionaiy a whole army of purely technical words ; such as, indeed, are not for the most part, except by an abuse of language, words at all, but signs; having been deliberately invented as the no- menclature, and, so to speak, the algebraic notation of some special art or science, and having never passed the threshold of this, nor mingled with the general family of words. It is not unfrequently a barren ostentation which induces the bringing in of these, that so there may be grounds for boasting of an immense addition made to the vocabulary. Such additions are very cheaply made. No- thing is easier than to turn to modern treatises on che- mistry or electricity, or on some other of the sciences which hardly or not at all existed half a century ago, or which, if they existed, have yet been in later times wholly new-named — as botany, for example, — and to transplant from these new terms by the hundred and the thousand, with which to crowd and deform the pages of a Dictionary ; and then to boast of the vast increase of words which it has gained over its predecessors. The labour is little more than that of transcription, but the gain is nought; or, indeed, less than nought ; for it is not merely that half a dozen genuine English words recovered from our old authors would be a greater gain, a more real advance toward the completion of our vocabulary than a hundred or a thousand of these; but additions of this kind are mere disfigurements of the work which they profess to com- plete. Let such be reserved for a technological lexicon by themselves ; such a supplement to the Dictionary of the Academy has lately been published in France : but in a Dictionary of the language they are a pure incumbrance, troubling the idea of the book, occupying precious room OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 47 to wliich they have no manner of claim, and which will be abundantly needed for that which has. It must be confessed that Johnson offends often and greatly in this point. There is hardly a page in his Dic- tionary where some word does not occur which has no business there. What has an English Dictionary to do with grammatical terms such as * zeugma/ ' polysyndeton ;' with rhetorical, ' auxesis / with medical, ' aegilops/ ' parotis/ ' ecphracticks/ ' meliceris/ * steatoma/ * striatura ;' with zoological, ' lamellated,' ' stria) / with architectural, ' zocle,' ' pentastyle ;' with botanical, ' polypetalous,' ' quadriphyl- lous,' '•dorsiferous;' with 'acroteria,' ' alectryomancy,' 'or- thodromics,' and, I doubt not, one or two thousand more which might easily be culled from his pages ? all, in their places, if wanted, if well put together, very good ; but not in their places here. And then, as though these were not enough, Todd has thought it needful to add largely to their number; while Webster has far outdone both. His Dic- tionary, while it is scanted of the barest necessaries which such a work ought to possess, affords in about a page and a half the following: choice additions to the Enjjlish lan- guage : — ' zeolitiform,' ' zinkiferous,' ' zinky,' ' zoophy- tological,' ' zumosimeter,' ' zygodactulous,' ' zygomatic,' with some twenty more. I am reminded here of the hearty protest of a writer in the seventeenth century against the favour shown to these hideous exotics, coupled with the neglect of so much which has sprung from, and is racy of, our own soil. " It will," he exclaims, " well be- come those of us who have a more hearty love for what is our own than wanton longiugs after what is others, to fetch back some of our own words that have been jostled out in wrong, that worse from elsewhere might be hoisted in ; or else to call in from the fields and waters, shops and workhousen, that well fraught world of words that answers works, by which all learners are taught to do, and not to make a clatter Methinks this of all times 4S ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN should be tlie time wherein, if ever, we should gather up those scattered words of ours that speak works, rather than to suck in those of learned air from beyond the sea, which are as far off sometimes from the things they speak, as they are from us to whom they are spoken."^ It is a notable merit in Richardson, that he has thrown overboard far the greater part of this rubbish, for rubbish in this place it has a right to be called. Still, even he does not draw rigidly enough the line of demarcation between words which belong to common English, and to special arts and sciences; between catholic and sectarian words. What, we may ask, does an English Dictionary want with ^ tophaceous,' with ^ oedema' and ^ oedematous,' ' phagedenick,' and the numerous words which he supports by citations from Wiseman's Siirc/ery ? In almost every case these are superfluous, and worse than superfluous. But are, it may be asked, no scientific words to find place in a Dictionary? The answer is easy. None but the following. Those, first, which have passed out of their peculiar province into more or less general use. In every branch of human study there are a certain number of these ; which have become, so to speak, the heritage of all intelligent men, whether they have been initiated into that special study or no. It will, of course, not always be easy to say exactly what these are, to draw the line which separates them from the abstruser terms of a science ; and no two lexicographers can be expected to draw the line so as exactly to include and exclude the same words ; yet this seems to me a sufficiently guiding principle in the adoption or rejection of these terms. Thus ^ zenith,' ' nadir,' have plainly a right to a place, as ^almacantar' (Todd) plainly has none ; ' paronomasia' it would be absurd to reject, it is as absurd to include ' autonomasia.' Then, secondly. * F\TEFAX, Bidk and Selvedge of the Wo?'ld. 1674. To the Header, OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 49 such technical and scientific words as, although they have not thus past into more or less general use, or at least general understanding, are scattered up and down our litera- ture ; I use literature here not in the sense of good books as distinguished from bad, but in its proper antithesis to science. Thus if Burton uses * elegm,' and Jeremy Taylor 'spagyrist,' these words must be admitted into the Dic- tionary; the mischievous error lies in swamping it with words which it is necessary to go to seek in special treatises, and which have never travelled beyond these. And as an English Dictionary ought not to include the technical words of different sciences, as little ought it to attempt to supply the place of popular treatises on the dif- ferent branches of human knowledge ; it must everywhere preserve the line firm and distinct between itself and an encyclopedia. Let the quotations yield as much in- formation as they can be made to yield, in subordination to their primary purpose, which is, to illustrate the word, and not to tell us about the thing ; and in the due and happy selection of these, so as, if possible, to combine both objects, the lexicographer may display eminent skill. Nor would any one object, if under some really difficult word, these citations did not exactly observe symmetrical proportion with other citations, but somewhat exceeded.* But what can be more absurd than diffuse descriptions from the com- piler's own pen, or from books which have no character of literature about them, of the plants, fruits, flowers, precious stones, animals, and the rest, whose names find place in his columns ? It is strange that Johnson's strong common sense did not save him from falling into this error ; but it has not. He might well have spared us thirteen closely printed lines on an opal, nineteen on a rose, twenty- one on the almug-tree, as many on the air pump, not * I would instance the two passages in Oleabius' D^avels (1669), one on ' coffee,' p. 240, and another on *tea,' p. 241, as happy examples of this combination. £ 50 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN fewer on the natural history of the armadillo^ and rather more than sixty on the pear. All this is repeated by Todd ; and in an exaggerated form by Webster^ from whom, for instance, we may learn of the camel, that it constitutes the riches of the Arabian, that it can sustain abstinence from drink for many days, and in all, twenty-five lines of its natural history. Again, there is a defect of true insight into what are the proper bounds and limits of a Dictionary, in the admission into it of the innumerable family of compound epithets, such as ' cloud-capt,^ 'heaven-saluting,^ ' flower-en woven,' and the like. Here, too, the rule is plain. When words have been brought into close connexion with one another, not in the choice or caprice of one writer, and on a single occasion or two or three occasions, but by the consenting use of many appear in constant alliance, being in this their recognized juxtaposition to all intents and purposes a single word, they may then claim their admission of right. Thus we ought not to look in vain for 'hunchbacked,' 'light- headed,' ' lightfingered,' and such composite words as these. Where, on the contrary, words are not married, but only, as it were, kiss one another for an instant, and then part company again, it may be for ever, it is worse than mere waste of room to make a place for them. Johnson does so ; but in measure. Thus, having after ' cloud' in- serted 'cloud-capt' and 'cloud-compelling,' he holds his hand ; while Todd, in a sort of practical irony of his great predecessor, and shewing whither the principle which he had admitted would lead, adds seven more, which owe their whole existence to a hyphen ; ' cloud-ascending', ' cloud- born,' 'cloud-eclipsed,' 'cloud-dispelling,' 'cloud-kissing,' ' cloud-topt,' ' cloud-touching,' each constituting an article by itself; and then Webster is a step still further in advance, having fifteen epithets, into which ' heaven' enters, from 'heaven-aspiring' to 'heaven-warring,' each of these, too, an independent article; while ' heart' is a component part OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 51 of thirty-three. Here is in great part an explanation of the twenty thousand words which he boasts are to be found in his pages over and above those included in the latest edition of Todd. Admitting these transient combinations as though they were really new words, it would have been easy to have increased his twenty thousand by twenty thousand more. Richardson very properly excludes all these ; where he errs, it is perhaps in the opposite extreme, in neglecting some true and permanent coalitions. If it be argued here that by the rejection or expulsion of these we should lose some eminent beauties and felicities of the language, which have embodied themselves in these com- binations, and which deserve to be recorded, the answer is easy. In the first place, even if it were necessary to do so, they must still go, if they have no proper place in the work in hand. But it is not needful. Such of these epithets as are worth preserving may easily be preserved and incorpo- rated in the book by a quotation of the passage in which they occur, under one or other of the words of which they are composed ; or, better still, under that of the person or thing to which they are applied. He who would not lose sight of Shakespeare's ^ heavy -gaited toad,' or Sylvester's 'opal-coloured morn,' or Marlowe's * golden-fingered Ind,' would have two or three opportunities of introducing them into his Dictionary.^ A few words in conclusion, and with reference which I once more desire to make to the work which we ourselves have in hand. Some shortcomings have been pointed out in our Dictionaries, and though, taking them in all, they cannot be said to be few, yet the books from which they are chiefly drawn, as you will not have failed to observe, are * It is very characteristic of the incompleteness which must attend every attempt to gather this innumerable army of compound epithets into a Dictionary, that not one of these three here named is to be found in Johnson, Todd, or Webster. E 2 52 ox SOME DEFICIENCIES IN comparatively few; and even these books are capable of yielding infinitely more in this kind than they have here yielded. It is easy, then, to guess how much must remain behind. Indeed, how should there not? For let us only consider the immense extent of the literature of England, the number of books which compose it ; and how is it pos- sible for any single scholar, even with a large portion of his lifetime devoted to this one object, to bring within his own ken more than a very small proportion of these ? There are some single authors who would abundantly serve as a task of toil for a year, and that to the most industrious student. I am persuaded there are very few who would work through HoUand^s seven folios, large and small, so as they deserve and demand to be worked through for philological purposes, in a shorter time. The three folio volumes of Foxe^s Booh of Martp's would certainly of themselves occupy many months. What is the consequence of this enormous disproportion between the work to be done and the working power to accomplish it? The compiler of a Dictionary, hopeless to find himself in possession of the whole treasure in some books, of whose value he is yet too well aware to leave them altogether untouched, dips into them here and there; often with signal advantage to his work, but still not in this fulfilling the demands which the ideal Dictionary that floats before our eyes would make on its compilers. Thus Dr. Johnson, with characteristic truthfulness, tells us how he was compelled to supply the manifest deficiencies in preceding works of the kind " by fortuitous and unguided excursions into books, gleaning as industry should find, or chance should direct;" and congratulates himself on the success which attended these desultory forays. But it is evident that if by these much is brought away, very much more must be left behind ; nor can such irregular efforts ever yield that Lexicon totius AnglicitatiSj which we justly desire. I seem to myself to trace clearest evidences of this random reading in the great work which Johnson has produced. Thus OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 53 he quotes, not altogether unseldom, a work to which I have frequently referred, I mean HaekeVs Life of Arclihislwp Williams ; yet it is quite impossible that he could have read it through, or nearly through ; for the book literally swarms with words which ought to find, but never have found, their place in a Dictionary. It is, indeed, a most curious medley in diction, singularly combining the two extremes of English ; being full on the one side of scholarly, oftentimes pedantic, Graecisms, as 'scleragogy,^^ a word used by ascetics to express a severe handling of the body ; ' hecatontarchy ;' Latinisms, such as 'consciuncle'- ' solertiousness,^^ with a few Italianisms to boot ; ' bugiard'^ and ' amorevolous,'^ are examples in this kind; and on the other side, abounding with our most genuine Anglo-Saxon phrase ; such words as ' may -lord,'* ' goll-sheaves,'^ which one meets in no glossary or Dictionary (the last I only guess at the meaning of), with a vast number more of the same kind are to be found in his pages, but not one of them in Johnson, nor, as far as I can note, in our other Dictionaries. Something of the same sort I observe in Richardson. He has drawn, as he justly makes his boast in his Preface, a large number of books within the circle of his reading, * "Not our Reformation, but our slothfulness, doth indispose us, that we let others run faster than we, in temperance, in chastity, in sclcragogy, as it was called." — Pt. 2, p. 51. * " Their rubrics are filled with punctilios, not for consciences, but consciuncles," — Pt. i, p. 66. 3 " Which abounded to the praise of Mr. Williams's solertiousness" —Pt. 1, p. 22. "* " Like an egregious hugiard, he is here quite out of the truth." — Pt. i,p. 71. * ** He would leave it the Princessa to show her cordial and amorevO' lous afiections." — Pt. i, p. 161. ^ " Not only such corrupt ones must needs decline faster than they f>ct up, but the most circumspect who possess such a room as they did, will prove to be May-lords in Fortune's interlude." — Pt. i, p. 40. 7 " All the rest of the articles [i.e., of accusation] were goll-sheaveSj that went out in a sudden blaze." — Pt. 2, p. 92. 54 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN which had never been employed for lexicographical purposes before ; and the virgin soil which he has tilled has often yielded him rich and large returns. Yet it lies in the necessity of things, in the limited capacities of any single man, that of the works which he uses, some, and those important ones, can have only been partially read. In a very small matter I find a curious evidence of this ; in the fact, namely, that he shares the impression of those who have gone before him, of Johnson and Nares, that the verb ' to dade,^ signifying to lead as one leads a child by the hand, is only to be found in Drayton. Indeed, he puts more emphasis into the assertion than any of his prede- cessors — ^' a word," he says, " peculiar to Drayton" — a fact, prima facie, very unlikely, belonging, as it evidently does, to the old stock of the language; but singularly enough, he actually quotes in another part of his Dic- tionary, (s. V. ^ runt'), some words of Holland's, which, if he had read three lines further, would have shown him that others, as well as Drayton, employed ' to dade/ ^ Let me again say that these observations are not made in any spirit of detraction from works of immense and conscientious labour, but only as pointing out what cannot but continually be, while art is so long, and life so short. And having touched on this theme, I will take the oppor- tunity of noting, in direct connexion with our subject, a serious omission on the part of many recent editors of our older authors, and one which must greatly diminish the worth of their labours ; this, namely, that they have failed to append to their editions a glossary of the rare and remarkable words which the works may contain, with a reference to the page where they occur.^ I add this last * " A man of years, who is a politician, must offer himself lovingly Unto those that make toward him, and be glad to sort and converse with them ; such he ought to inform, to correct, to dade and lead by the hand." — Plutarch, p. 399. ^ Let me further say that the glossary should be apart, in an index by itself, not scattered through the general index j in which case it becomes CUE ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 55 clause, superfluous as it may seem ; because in some of the publications of the Parker Society, as, for instance, in the writings of Coverdale and Hutchinson, the provoking and tantalizing absurdity is committed of giving the rare words, or the words used in rare senses, but without a reference to enable the reader to discover the place where they occur. It is the same with the works of Bishop Hall, edited some thirty years ago by one bearing his own name. What student of English would not give much to have an efficient glossary of the twelve volumes of his works ? But there, too, is a glossary without references, one, therefore, which is practi- cally useless. In glancing my eye over it, I saw various words, which, for one reason or another, I would most gladly have turned to. Useful, however, as the information might have been to me, life was not long enough for the perusal of twelve thick volumes to obtain this information, which, therefore, I was compelled to forego. To those who, in the act of editing, have become familiar with every page of a book, the labour of preparing such an index would be literally nothing; while the treasures which they would thus place at the disposal of the student of English phi- lology, treasures which he could only otherwise make his own by enormous labour, and labour which in most cases it is quite impossible for him to bestow, would be immense. Certainly, when one compares the way in which the classical works of Greece and Rome are edited with the slight and perfunctory editing of many among our own, the contrast does little honour to our zeal for our native tongue. There might well be a general consent among scholars to consider no book of our earlier literature as decently edited, no editor as having tolerably fulfilled the obligations which, as such, he undertook, where such a glossary as I speak of is wanting. It is certain, however, of a vast number of our books, that much more laborious to use. Even those among the Parker Society's publications, which, as regards the glossary, are edited carefully and well, Becon for instance, lie under this fault. 56 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN they will never be reprinted, that the facility of entrance into their philological treasures which good indexes might . give will never be afforded. Add to these all those other works which I have just noted, that have lately been insuf- ficiently edited, with no verbal indexes, or with bad ones, and for which the opportunity will certainly not soon occur of repairing these errors, and we have a mass of English literature, which can only be made available for Dictionary purposes through the combined action of many; a dense phalanx of books which the desultory and isolated eifforts of one here and one there can never hope effectually to pene- trate. In that most interesting preface which Jacob Grimm has prefixed to his own and his brother's German Dictionary, he makes grateful and honourable mention of no less than eighty-three volunteer coadjutors, who had undertaken each to read for him one or more authors, and who had thrown into the common stock of his great work their several ^symbols,' the results of their several toils; while he expresses a confident hope that, as the work proceeds, he will enlist many more of these helpers. It was something of this common action which the Philological Society sug- gested to its members last session ; only that it set before itself and them, not a new Dictionary, but what should be at once a Supplement to Dictionaries already existing, an essential aid and support to Dictionaries which are yet to be. It entertained, also, the hope, in which it has not been disappointed, that many besides its own members would gladly divide with them the toil and the honour of such an undertaking.^ * Let me mention here that seventy-six volunteers have already come forward, claiming their shares in this task. A hundred and twenty-one works of English authors, in most cases the whole works of each author, have been taken in hand by them ; and in evidence of the interest which the work inspires, I may add that thirty-one contributions, many of them, I understand, of very high value, have been already sent in. Any reader of these pages, who should feel disposed to join in the work, OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 57 Only thus can we hope that this work will ever be effec- tively done, that we shall ever obtain that complete inven- tory of our English tongue, with other accessory advantages, which we ought not to rest satisfied until we possess. The story in Herodotus is probably familiar to us all of the course which the Persians followed, when they proposed to make entire clearance of the inhabitants of some conquered island, to bring them all within their grasp. An entire army would join hand in hand till it covered the breadth of the island, and would then in this fashion pass over it from end to end, rendering it impossible that so much as one of those whom they desired to seize should escape. This (Tayrjvivtiv, this drawing as with a sweep-net over the whole surface of English literature, is that which we would fain see ; which we would count it an honour to be the means of organizing and setting forward ; being sure that it is only by such combined action, by such a joining of hand in hand on the part of as many as are willing to take their share in this toil, that we can hope the innumerable words which have escaped us hitherto will ever be brought within our net, that an English Dictionary ^vill prove that all-embracing iravaypov which, indeed, it should be. addressing a line to the Secretary of the Committee, Herbert Coleridge, Esq., 2, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, would receive from him a list of books unappropriated yet, and all other information he might require. INDEX OF WOEDS. Abandon, 34 Abyss, 27 Acme, 30 Afterwitted, 16 Amorevolous, 53 Aloofness, 15 Analyse, 14 Apostate, 25 Archives, 27 Ardelio, 12 Aureola, 42 Awkness, 15 BiLAND, 31 Biography, 26 Bison, 28 Bog, 14 Bravo, 29 Brimly, 18 Bug, 30 Bu^ard, 53 Buudress, 19 Cancel, 31 Captainess, 19 Cento, 28 Chasm, 26 Chasteling, 20 Chyle, 27 Cimici, 30 Cinder, 21 Clitch, 14 Clumsy, 36 Coaxation, 6 Coffee, 49 Committee, 24 Common sense, 43 Conculcation, 16 Consciuncle, 53 Couuterpoison, 32 Cynosure, 26 Dade, 54 Dehonestate, 19 Deliuition, 6 Demagogue, 26 Demi-island, 31 Demi-isle, 31 Deplored, 36 Deposit, 29 Desired, 36 Diary, 21 Diatribe, 27 Docible, 38 Docile, 38 Dozzled, 13 Dwarfling, 20 Eae-sheift, 32 Economize, 25 Eldern, 20 Emulus, 12 Engastrimyth, 31 Epithet, 27 Excarnificate, 19 Expanse, 27 Ecstacy, 27 Extirper, 18 Faefalla, 12 Fashiouist, 17 Favor, 40 Fellowfeel, 19 Firmament, 35 Fitchy, 17 Flaite, 13 Flatteress, 19 Flowretry, 17 Flox, 14 Fumishness, 10 Furlong, 41 Gabs, 18 Getnothing, 23 Gingemesa, 18 Goll-sheaves, 53 Good-nature, 44 Grimsir, 9 Hazle, 13 Hero, 26 Hickscomer, 10 Hispidity, 17 Hopple, 13 Host, 29 Idea, 38 Idiom, 27 Ignoble, 21 Imager, 31 Individual, 30 Ineptus, 39 Instinct, 43 Interval, 28 Interstice, 28 Intrudress, 19 Jackstbaw, 10 Kext, 16 Kumbix, 11 LOVELING, 20 Ludibundness, 6 Lumber, 36 Machine, 28 Maleficence, 17 May-lord, 53 Medioxumous, 6 Metal, 35 MirificQut, 6 60 INDEX OF WORDS. Mullerosity, 6 Prowlery, 17 Suicide, 40 Mummy, 28 Pulke, 14 Sure, 35 Swillbowl, 22 Nasuteness, 16 QUADEIPAETITION, Symbol, 35 Negoce, 40 16 Negotious, 40 Rex, 12 Tea, 49 Negotiousness, 41 Ruddle, 15 Thought, 35 Niceling, 20 Timeling, 20 Nipfarthing, 22 Sape, 38 Tinnen, 20 Noctambulo, 29 Sanguinolency, 17 Try, 14 Sayman, 16 Scleragogy, 53 Turntippet, 22 Opeea, 40 Opime, 6 Scoundrel, 24 UmSTEOKE, II Sculptor, 31 Unactive, 21 Palliaed, 10 Secure, 38 Unease, 33 Palmiferous, 6 Septemfluous, 6 TJnidle, 33 Panic, 29 Setling, 20 Unio, 40 Parallelogram, 27 Snag, 21 Unlusty, 33 Peninsula, 31 Snig, 21 Penury, 36 Solertiousness, 53 Veebalist, 16 Pervicacy, 18 Sopor, 18 Phalanx, 28 Sordidity, 17 Wallnut, 41 Philtre, 28 Sortilege, 18 Wanze, 15 Pickpenny, 22 Pingle, 14 Soveraintess, 19 Whirlpool, 36 Speciosity, 17 Wispen, 20 Pleasant, 21 Spectre, 28 Witticism, 24 Plunder, 40 Spendthrifty, 17 Wormling, 20 Polytheism, 30 Spinster, 36 Priestress, 15 Spong, 13 Yaenen, 20 Pritch, 15 Strut, 21 ^ Prosody, 27 Subsannation, 6 Zoophyte, 17 /^3 THE E>'D. / j^«-/ ^ J ,„J^ /XZ^ '^^^'^'^ "^ ' ^C^i^ >^wv-v^, /^l^^ A_>(^0^^5.«.^ m^M^^^. 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