Art. 11.—THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

1. A Dictionary of the English Language. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Sixth Edition. London, 1785. 2. A New English Dictionary. Edited by Sir James A. H. Murray, Dr Henry Bradley, Dr W. A. Craigie, and Mr C. T. Onions. Oxford: University Press, 1888. (In process of publication.)

3. The English Dialect Dictionary. Edited by Joseph Wright. Oxford: University Press, 1898.

4. An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. By Ernest Weekley. Murray, 1921.

THE making of dictionaries is an art which in recent times has taken a bewildering variety of forms. If we recall only such types as dictionaries of science, which may vary from glossaries of technical terms to specialised encyclopædias; dictionaries of biography, which may be national or connected with special classes or crafts; dictionaries of art, which may be concerned with craftsmanship and treat of technique or concerned with taste and deal with the elements of beauty; we realise that the name is legion, even of the classes among which they can be distributed. We also realise that the works thus arranged are so diverse in character that to group them together hardly serves any useful purpose. fact, the term dictionary is so often misapplied and appropriated to books which have but little relation to diction, that the writer who uses it in an undefined sense can hardly hope to be understood.

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Among the works so classed there is one type which is unmistakably authentic-the book which deals with the speech of a people, of a place, or of a time. Thus limited, the class of dictionaries is found to be singularly small. Antiquity has bequeathed to us only fragmentary records in this form. The Museum of the Greek Grammarian Callimachus, who flourished in the third century B.C., is commonly cited as the earliest example. But the work itself is lost and would seem to have been rather critical than lexicographical. We must come to the time of Augustus for the earliest work which appears to be concerned with the meanings of words-the De significatione verborum of Verrius Flaccus. Here again

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the work itself is lost; but an abridgment made some four hundred years later by Pompeius Festus has survived, and in a form still further abridged by Paul Diacre has furnished important material to the modern Latin dictionary. Indeed, as Skeat has remarked, a dictionary, in the full sense of the word, was hardly possible before the era of printing. The value of a dictionary confined to the few copies which could be made by hand would be comparatively slight, and the labour of producing it, when private collections of books were small and libraries inaccessible, must have been enormous. The dictionary intended to serve the practical ends of instruction in the language treated, seems to have come into existence at Rome, when Greek literature and the Greek language became subjects of study to cultured Romans. We possess as examples of this type of work the 'Onomasticon' of Julius Pollux, the glossary of Attic authors of Harpocration, and a few others of a like kind.

It is significant that the Middle Ages have left practically nothing of this order. The Lexicon of Suidas and the Vocabularium of Papias are the principal examples, and it has been much debated whether Suidas lived in the days of the Roman Emperors or in the tenth or fourteenth century A.D. Of Papias it may indeed be said that he flourished in the eleventh century and laboured at the Latin dictionary; but it was the dictionary of a decayed Latin.

With the advent of the printing press a new interest in words arose, and was increased by the study, introduced at the Renaissance, of the ancient tongues, particularly of classical Greek and Latin. From this period the production of dictionaries received assiduous attention, and the names of Constantin, Scapula, Comenius, Schrevelius, Vossius, and finally of Forcellini, whose work is better known under the name of his coadjutor, Facciolati, are associated with the perfecting of the Greek and Latin dictionaries into complete expository treatises upon the language of the classic authors. The progress of this work gave an impulsefirst felt in Italy-towards the refining and fixing in literary form of the current speech of modern Europe. Hence arose the great literary dictionaries in various

lands-the Vocabulario degli Accademici della Crusca in Italy, in 1612; the Dictionnaire de l'Academie Française, 1694; and the Dictionary of the Academia Española, published at Madrid in 1726.

The same movement that produced these great dictionaries on the Continent, was active in this country, and found notable expression in various ways, among others in an open letter addressed in the year 1712 by Dean Swift to the Lord Treasurer Harley. Swift worked out and urged upon the Prime Minister the necessity of a scheme for the formation of an English Academy 'to ascertain the English language and fix it for ever,' 80 putting a term to that change in the forms of words and the idioms of speech which has rendered the English of the Middle Ages largely obsolete.

'The rude Latin,' Swift says, 'of the monks is still very intelligible, whereas had their records been delivered down in the vulgar tongue so barren, so barbarous, so subject to continual and succeeding changes they could not now be understood, unless by antiquaries who make it their study to expound them. If things go on at this rate, all I can promise your Lordship is that, about two hundred years hence, some painful compiler, who will be at the trouble of studying old language, may inform the world that, in the reign of Queen Anne, Robert, Earl of Oxford, a very wise and excellent man, was made High Treasurer and saved his country, which in those days was almost ruined by a foreign war and a domestic faction. Thus much he may be able to pick out and willing to transfer to his new history, but the rest of your character will probably be dropped on account of the antiquated style and manner they are de livered in.'

The views which Swift here expresses with such humorous exaggeration were seriously held by him, by Pope, by Chesterfield, presumably also by Harley, to whom Swift commends them as to a sympathiser, and, with a difference, by Johnson himself. In the preface to his Dictionary, at the end of a dissertation on the mutability of English speech and its causes, Johnson says:

'The great pest of speech is frequency of translation. No book was ever turned from one language into another without imparting something of its native idiom, this is the most

mischievous and comprehensive innovation, single words may enter by thousands and the fabric of the tongue continue the same, but new phraseology changes much at once, it alters not the single stones of the building but the order of the columns. If an Academy should be established for the cultivation of our style; which I, who can never wish to see dependence multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will 'hinder or destroy; let them instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries endeavour with all their influence to stop the license of translators whose idleness and ignorance, if it is suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France.'

In point of scope and magnitude these classical dictionaries are, if not equal, at least fairly comparable with one another. For instance, the Italian dictionary comprises some 30,000 words in the approved vocabulary which is drawn from a series of 200 authors, running back to Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch. It was first published in 1612, and has been brought down by successive editions to our own times.

The French Dictionary, published first in 1694, comprises about the same number of words; the date to which its sources of diction are carried back is not ascertainable, as in the case of the Italian Dictionary, for the simple reason that the Academie has published no statement on the subject and has cited no authorities in support of its definitions. In his review of French literature, which serves as preface to the sixth edition of the book, M. Villemain, quoting the Abbé Dubos, places the dawn of the classic period of French literature in the middle of the 17th century. If we take that view of the age of modern French, we must set it down as junior to Italian by two hundred and fifty years, and of later date by one hundred and fifty years than Johnson's Classical English. By issuing revised editions at intervals the French Academy has brought its dictionary, as with the Italian, down to modern times. The French, however, have issued since 1835 not new editions of the classic work but 'Complements,' or, as we should say, 'Supplementary Volumes,' which comprise the current words omitted from the Dictionary proper. This work, a compromise between the classical and popular types of dictionary, is a hybrid of no great

value. Lacking etymology and illustrative quotations it is far inferior to Littré's Dictionary for general use, whereas the authority of the Academy, which is its distinctive feature, is of no value in a vocabulary of vulgar speech. It is the old dictionary of 1835 which alone among French dictionaries is interesting from our present point of view.

With this work Johnson's Dictionary is as comparable in point of performance as in respect of its design. The collection of words is, in later editions, more than equal in number to that of the French dic tionary; in the first edition it was somewhat fewer. It has been issued in successive editions down to our own time, the last edition being brought out by Latham in

1882.

Johnson's work, although comparable both for scale and finish to the Academy dictionaries, was carried through in much shorter time. His task was completed in seven years, while the Italian Academy took twenty, the French forty years, on the first editions of their respective works. The difference is to be explained by alteration of method. Johnson worked single-handed and under contract; the Academicians proceeded in conference and under no pressure of time. There is a good story, to which Larousse gives credence, serving to illustrate the leisurely method of the Academicians. One hot summer day they had spent a morning debating the distinction between 'de suite' and tout de suite. When the discussion showed signs of degenerating, the Abbé Boisrobert interposed with the suggestion, We are wasting a fine day, like monks in a scriptorium. Let us adjourn to an oyster bar that we know well and then renew the discussion with reinvigorated powers. 'Agreed,' said the Academicians, and tout de suite' added Chapelaine. Accordingly they filed off to the Vendanges de Bourgogne, and Boisrobert gave the order for six dozen oysters 'de suite.' 'Oui, tout de suite,' added Conrart. Mais, Messieurs,' said the écaillère, 'si vous voulez que j'ouvre vos huitres de suite, il m'est impossible de vous les servir tout de suite.' 6 Agreed,' said the Academicians with one voice, and discovered that their difference had been resolved by the oyster seller. It may be believed that Johnson did not derive much