NA rURE 



\_May 3, 1877 



English language ; that when Dr. Latham undertook the 

 task for which his attainments so well fit him, he had an 

 e>:cellcnt opportunity for doing a splendid service to our 

 tongue and making for himself a lasting name. The only 

 dicdoniiies that make any pretence to exhaustivenesss, 

 Webstei-'s, Worcester's, and ihe Imperial, with all their 

 merits, come far short of what an ideal national dictionary 

 should be, and they cannot for one moment be compared 

 with Littrii's mai^nuin opus. Webster's etymology is ex- 

 tremely unsatisfactory and misleading in its method, the 

 vocabulary is a conglomeration on no principle, and the 

 defmitions are too frequently unmethodical. We consider 

 Worcester in some respects more satisfactory, more scien- 

 tific in its method than Webster. The Imperial is rather 

 a small encyclopedia than a dictionary, minute descrip- 

 tion frequently giving place to definition, and the vocabu- 

 lary being much fuller than that of any existing dictionary. 

 This feature, however, seems rather to be the result of a 

 desire to crowd in as many words as possible than of 

 any well-considered scientific plan. The etymology of 

 the Imperial might almost have been written a century 

 ago. Thus Dr. Latham had a splendid field before him, 

 and Littre has shown what one man is capable of doing 

 in the way of dictionary-making. We need not for the 

 hundredth time contrast his work with the endless pot- 

 tering of the French Academy. Perhaps it scarcely needs 

 to be proved that in the construction of a dictionary, as 

 in most other great undertakings, failure will surely be 

 the resu'.t unless one -competent man has the supreme 

 command. 



The wotk before us is an abridgment of Dr. Latham's 

 larger work in four quarto volumes. The abridgment 

 has been made mainly by the omission of the illustrative 

 quotations which form so large a feature in the larger 

 work, and of certain disquisitions on extremely minute 

 points which occur during the progress of the work. 

 Many will be of opinion that the omission of the latter is 

 distinctly beneficial ; they are too frequently little else 

 than laborious trifling. The omission of the quotations 

 is, no doubt, a disadvantage ; they bear the same relation 

 to and throw the same light on the definition that speci- 

 mens do in the case of geology and experiments in oth^r 

 sciences. A very few have been retained, and it would 

 have been an advantage had there been many more, as 

 there might easily have been had the various meanings 

 under each word been run on instead of being para- 

 graphed. 



Dr. Latham calls his dictionary a new edition of 

 Johnson ; if it were only this it would be at once a 

 confession that the work was an anachronism. To bring 

 the heroic old compiler's work up to date would re- 

 quire quite as much labour as Johnson bestowed on the 

 original ; and as Dr. Latham's work has so much that 

 is new in all departments, we must regard its title as 

 mainly an act of courtesy to the memory of " the great 

 exicographer." As the abridgment contains] all the 

 vocabulary of the larger work, the two in this respect may 

 be regarded as identical, and from its size and price, the 

 larger work is evidently meant to be a practically com- 

 plete English dictionary. 



Dr. Latham's vocabulary is of course much more 

 extensive than that of Johnson. He has read largely in 

 modern works in all departments of literature and 



science, and thus been able to register many words that 

 did not exist in Johnson's time, as well as many new 

 meanings that have been given to old words. The con- 

 sideration of vocabulary is probably the most serious 

 that comes before any one who sets himself to the labo- 

 rious task of compiling a dictionary. His duty is certainly 

 to set down all words used by reputable writers. But is 

 this all? How far back is an EngUsh dictionary-maker 

 logo? to Spencer or to Chaucer? Mr. Freeman might 

 possibly say to " Beowulf." Who are to be considered 

 " reputable " writers ? Should only '• reputable " writers 

 be taken into account ? And shoald no word that has 

 not been printed in a regular way be admitted ? How 

 far should slang terms and provincialisms, including 

 Scotticisms {pace Prof. Blackie) be admitted ? Again, 

 what is to be considered literature ? Must all science be 

 excluded, and the vocabulary be confined to such words 

 as occur in poetry, belles lettres, history, philosophy ? 

 These and many other questions must be settled at the 

 very outset by the compiler of a dictionary making any 

 pretence to completeness, and we are glad to see that, to 

 a considerable extent, Dr. Latham his settled them on 

 the liberal side. His aim has apparently been to make a 

 work that would be useful to people of wide culture and 

 general reading, and he has interpreted the English lan- 

 guage to be the language used by the people of England 

 in expressing their thoughts on the varied subjects that 

 engage their attention. 



We are at a loss to discover the principle, however, on 

 which Dr. Latham has compiled his vocabulary. He has 

 certainly inserted a large selection of scientific terms, but 

 the selection appears to us to have been made in a capri- 

 cious and arbitrary manner. Pie has, for example, given 

 many of the technical names of the divisions and sub- 

 divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but it is 

 not easy to see by what clue he has been guided. Why 

 should Raptores and Natatores find a place while Scan- 

 sores, Insessores, and all the other avian orders are 

 omitted ? Is it that the tivo former have been de- 

 tected by Dr. Latham in some '■ literary " writer, v/hile 

 he has failed to come across the latter? Even Am- 

 phibia and Amphibian find no place, nor the adjective 

 Avian. We find Infusoria and Cetacea, and Mono- 

 tremata, but no Rodt.itia nor Carnivora, nor a host of 

 other names even more likely than those capriciously re- 

 gistered to be inquired for by readers of works of popular 

 zoology. It is a very nice question whether this class of 

 words should be admitted <at all into an English dic- 

 tionary, but if it be decided affirmatively the only satis- 

 factory scientific method is to admit all. A generic 

 name {e.g., Dion^ea) in this respect is quite as important 

 as that of the largest subdivision in zoology or botany. 



The defects of the dictionary are eqjally apparent in 

 other scientific departments. We find Oolitic and Triassic 

 and Drift, the last in some detail, but not Laurentian nor 

 Cambrian, nor such a common word as Pothole. Bio- 

 genesis, Abiogenesis, Heterogenesis, and Bacteria are 

 conspicuous by their absence ; as are also Eozoon, Atoll, 

 Globigerina, Hipparion, and .-Vmphioxus : Lepidosiren is 

 given in some detail. To Basin no geological meaning 

 is assigned. Pateozoic (with a bare reference of 

 Cajnozoic and Mezoic) is found, but not Azoic ; Per- 

 mian, but not Devonian, Silurian, or Purbeck ; Laby- 



