352 Dr. J. A. H. Murray [May 22, 



most interesting of these works was Baret's Alvearie of 1573, the 

 preface of which relates in such naive language the circumstances in 

 which it originated, and the difficulties its compiler had to encounter. 



Of all these works Latin was an essential part; but Latin was 

 now becoming insufficient to express the wants of the modern world, 

 and in 1530 Mayster John Palsgrave, a Londoner, who had studied 

 in Paris, composed his Esclaircisaement de la Langue Fran^oyse — 

 Grammar and Dictionary combined — for the Princess Mary Tudor, 

 when she was married to Louis XIL of France. Then followed a 

 Dictionary of English and Welsh in 1547, the famous Italian-English 

 World of Words of Florio in 1598, Percival's Spanish-En glish Dic- 

 tionary in 1599, and the no less renowned French- English Dictionary 

 of Eandall Cotgrave in 1611. 



Thus by the close of the sixteenth century English was supplied 

 with dictionaries of the important neighbouring languages, but it 

 bad not yet been found necessary to have a dictionary to teach men 

 their own English tongue. And when the want was felt, it was 

 natural that only the difficult words, the " ink-horn terms " were 

 contemplated. All the dictionaries of the seventeenth century were 

 only in purpose " Dictionaries of Hard Words." The first was the 

 Table Alphabetical of Kobert Cawdrey 1604; the second the English 

 Expositor of John Bullokar 1616; then came the first book calling 

 itself The English Dictionarie — by Henry Cockeram of Exeter, in 

 1623. This was divided into three parts: 1, the hard words explained 

 by easier words ; 2, the easy words, rendered by hard words, so as 

 to enable the writer to acquire a learned style ; 3, a classified list of 

 the names of History, Mythology, Natural History, etc., to which 

 allusions occurred in learned writings ; here appears the celebiated 

 account of the Crocodile, explaining the meaning of the phrase 

 *' crocodile's tears," i.e. those wept by the crocodile over the head of 

 the man whose body it has devoured, before it proceeds to eat the 

 head itself. Other seventeenth-century dictiouaries were Blount's 

 Glosaographia, Phillips's New World of Words, originally plagiarised 

 from Blount, and the Dictionary of Cocker the famous writiug master 

 and arithmetician of South wark ; also the three editions of Kersey, 

 whence Chatterton learned his Elizabethan words. 



The next great step forward was made by Nathanael Bailey, 

 who first endeavoured to make the dictionary contain all words, not 

 indeed for the sake of the explanation or even the spelling of the 

 common words, but in order to indicate their etymology. Bailey's 

 was the greatest name in lexicography during the first half of the 

 eighteenth century, and his fame was not for a long time eclii)sed even 

 by that of Johnson. He had many rivals and imitators, most of 

 whom tried like him to make " complete " dictionaries, and the com- 

 petition in the number of words now began. But before many years 

 elapsed, the feeling began to prevail that it was time there was pre- 

 pared a Standard Dictionary, in order to "fix the language" in the 

 state of perfection which it was considered to have now attained. 



