shared, his amazing capacity for unremitting labour 

 enabled him to take more than an equal part, and the 

 volumes produced by himself show characteristic 

 excellenrcs which cannot be exactly matched, though 

 they may be rivalled by merits of another kind. " He 

 will not write the last pages, but more than that of 

 any other man his name will be associated with the 

 long and cfticient working of the great engine of research 

 by which the Dictionary has been produced." 

 « « * * * 



Including the work of all the editors, the state of the 

 Oxford Dictionary in 1919 is as follows. Nine of the 

 ten volumes are complete, and, with the portions of 

 the tenth volume already published, carry the voca- 

 bulary without a break from A to Thyzle. V is 

 completed, and only one section of it remains to be 

 published. Most of U is practically ready for the 

 printer and the earlier part is in type. X and the 

 beginning of W and of Y are also in type. On 

 October i, 1919, the Dictionary extends to 14,080 pages 

 and deals with 376,624 words, illustrated by 1,642,057 

 quotations. 



This completion of the third half-million of quotations 

 contrasts with the original calculations of Mr. Coleridge, 

 that it would be time to begin the making of the 

 Dictionary when one hundred thousand quotations 

 were available. 



***** 



The seventh volume, containing the words beginning 

 with the letters O and P, contains more words than 

 any of the volumes published so far. The total is 

 48,870 words — 30,300 main words, 6,393 subordinate 

 words, 4,974 special combinations, and 7,203 ob\dous 

 combinations. Of the main words, 23,120 are described 

 Jis current, 5,335 as obsolete, and 1,845 as alien. As 

 against the Oxford total of 48,870, no other English 

 dictionary contains more than 27,097. No fewer than 

 38,365 words in the Oxford volume are illustrated by 

 quotations — no other English dictionary has more 

 than 8,368 words, rougUy 30,000 fewer, illustrated by 

 quotations, and the illustrative quotations themselves 

 number 175,130 in the Oxford book, or 154,790 more 

 than in any other comparable volume. Johnson's 

 dictionary contained 4,485 words beginning with O 

 and P, of which 3,661 were illustrated by quotations, 

 the quotations numbering 12,111. 



***** 



The number of years which have been required to 

 bring the Oxford Dictionary to this point will not seem 

 excessive, when it is compared with three foreign 

 dictionaries which in respect of plan and extent may 

 fairly be said to rival it. These are the Dctttsches 

 Worterbtich, begun by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm 

 Grimm, the Woordenboek der nederlandsche Taal, begun 



sprakft of the Swedish Academy. A summary of the 

 past progress and present state of these works affords 

 interesting evidence of the time which is normally 

 spent in the production of dictionaries of this kind. 

 • • • • • 



The preparatory work for the Deulsches Worlerbuch 

 was begun by the brothers Grimm in 1838, but the 

 printing did not commence till the very end of 1S51 ; 

 the first volume, containing .-^-Biek.molke, was 

 completed in 1854. Wilhelm Grimm, who died in 

 1859, ^^^ o'^ly t'^*^ letter D, which forms part of the 

 second volume ; Jacob completed the third volume in 

 1862, and had advanced some way into the fourth at 

 the time of his death, in 1863. Since that date the 

 work has been carried on by various scholeirs, some 

 twenty in all, eight of whom are specially mentioned in 

 some forms of the general title-page as it appears on 

 the covers of the separate parts. During these fifty-six 

 jxars the dictionary has progressed from F to an 

 advanced point in S, though part of G still remains to 

 be done. The rest of the alphabet is represented 

 chiefly by continuous portions of T, V, and W, with 

 smaller unconnected sections of S, U, V, W, and Z ; 

 most of these minor sections have been produced 

 within recent years, as the result of a special effort to 

 complete the work. With the exception of Vol. IV 

 (which is immensely out of proportion to the others), 

 the first nine volumes and the first part of Vol. X are 

 finished, and carry the work as far as Steifen. The 

 second part of Vol. X is also well advanced, and con- 

 siderable progress has been made with four of the six 

 remaining volumes. The total result of sixtj'-seven 

 years of printing and publishing amounts to 20,554 

 pages (equivalent to rather more than 10,000 pages of 

 the Oxford Dictionary), and covers about five-sixths 

 of the whole German vocabulary. 



***** 



The beginnings of the Dutch dictionary date from 

 1S50-51, and by 1852 the two original editors, De Vries 

 and Te Winkel, had started the sj'stematic collection 

 of materials for the work. It was not, however, tiU 

 1864 that the first part made its appearance. After 

 the death of Te Wihkel, in 1S68, De Vries continued the 

 work with various colleagues until his own death in 

 1S92 ; since that date the dictionary has been carried 

 on by some of these colleagues and by other editors 

 subsequently appointed. After fifty-five years of 

 publication, the present state of the Woordenboek is as 

 follows : Vols. I-VI, containing A to I, are complete 

 with the exception of the latter part of Vol. Ill, and 

 Vols. IX and X, containing M, N, and part of O, have 

 also been finished. Of the remainder. Vols. VIII and 

 XI have made considerable progress, while Vols. VII, 

 XII, and XIII are less advanced ; the latter, ending 



