PRESENT PROBLEMS OF ROMANCE PHILOLOGY 267 



as to the best disposition of material for an etymological Romance 

 dictionary was given by Gustav Korting, in his Lateinisch-romanisches 

 Worterbuch, which, considering the fact that no one had ever before 

 utilized such a disposition, was, in spite of, or rather indeed because 

 of, its extreme simplicity and convenience, and notwithstanding the 

 defects of its execution, an innovation of the utmost advantage to 

 etymological scholarship. 



This disposition consists in making a lemma of the Latin or other 

 etymon, under which are ranged all its Romance representatives, 

 with such discussion of each as circumstances call for. All the etyma, 

 of whatever source, are ranged under a single alphabet, and every 

 word treated, in whatever place and under whatever form, is indexed 

 for immediate reference to its etymon. The first and greatest utility 

 of this arrangement is that it gives the inquirer instantaneous 

 information as to whether the word in question is treated at all 

 in the work, and, if so, gives him immediate reference to its etymon 

 and the accompanying discussion. 



The present task, then, of Romance etymology is to evolve and 

 coordinate the material for an immense expansion and extension 

 of the idea of Korting 's Worterbuch, with application of the widest 

 and most accurate scholarship to the formidable, nay, inexhaustible 

 task. Instead of being limited to the literary languages, the dialects 

 and the patois should be subjected to similar treatment, until, in the 

 course of time and with the progress of scholarship and the accu- 

 mulation of its results, the foundations may be laid for a magnum 

 opus, which may be brought out under auspices in some respects 

 similar to those of the great European academies which cooperate in 

 the production of the stupendous Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. 



But such a work would still represent only one of the phases of 

 Romance lexicography. The time is already ripe for the complete 

 overhauling of the great national defining dictionaries of the various 

 Romance languages, such as Littre^s dictionary of the French 

 language, to mention only the one that stands foremost and best. 

 The type of the work here to be done is admirably indicated in the 

 Dictionnaire general of Darmesteter, Hatzfeld, and Thomas. An- 

 other monumental undertaking necessarily calling for mention 

 here is the Old French dictionary of Godefroy very recently com- 

 pleted in ten quarto volumes under the auspices of the French Gov- 

 ernment. Notwithstanding its immense value, probably no great 

 dictionary was ever published that fell so far short of the ideals of 

 such a work. This fact constitutes a pressing incentive to the goodly 

 company of Old French scholars throughout the world to labor 

 consciously and constantly for the amelioration of a work to which 

 they are already so deeply indebted and which only the combined 

 efforts of all who are in a position to contribute to it can bring to a 



