4:2 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
have also discovered that cater as a verb is a Shakesperian 
creation, for no writer had used it before,—and there 
is reason to think they will find that providently too was of 
Shakespearian birth. Of course neither of these terms occurs 
in any verse of the Bible. Biblical doctrine it would seem 
meets us in the dramatist much oftener than biblical diction. 
In regard to dictionaries as word-sources it is clear that our 
play-maker owed them very little. The most popular contem¬ 
porary works of that class were Palsgrave and Florio—the one 
a teacher of French and the other of Italian. Florio’s work 
entitled “A World of Words,’’ must have made somle new ones 
known to Shakespeare. In 1611, however, when Florio' regis¬ 
tered the term arbee-cee-booke he could not have read King 
Iohn in which Shakespeare had sixteen years before called the 
same thing by its folk-name an absey-booke, (I. 1. 196) speak¬ 
ing of “answer following question as in an absey-book,” that is 
ad>c book. Hot without reason do we find Florio’s peculiar 
follies held up to ridicule under the name of Holofernes in 
Love’s Labor Lost. On the whole 1 , one is more and more forced 
to the conclusion that, the historical or bookish sources of 
Shakespeare’s' vocables were a beggarly account of empty boxes, 
—and can only be contrasted with the treasures which his own 
writings display. A brief digression seems here more ex¬ 
cusable than may at first, be thought. 
For the last half century a dictionary of English has been in 
making in England. It is printed in instalments each no 
larger than a single number in a leading magazine. It 
abounds in illustrative citations which demonstrate the preemi¬ 
nence of Shakespeare’s vocabulary as it was impossible to see it 
before. It will point out every word which he was first to use, 
and every writer who used any word of his sooner than he. 
This work which it is hoped will be half finished during the 
present year, is called on its title pages, “A Hew English Dic¬ 
tionary on Historical Principles,” This title being too long 
for every-day use has been abridged in more ways than I can 
mention, and has at last dwindled to a monosyllable—that is 
either H-E-D or H-E-D—PI-E-D being made up of the initials 
of Historical English Dictionary,—and H-E-D of those begin- 
