literary men, as well as among the booksellers, that the time had come
for the preparation of a 'Standard Dictionary' of the English tongue.
The language had now attained a high degree of literary perfection; a
perfect prose style, always a characteristic of maturity, had been
created; a brilliant galaxy of dramatists and essayists--Dryden, Pope,
Addison, Steele, Swift, Defoe--had demonstrated that English was
capable of expressing clearly and elegantly everything that needed to
be expressed in language. The age of Queen Anne was compared to the
Ciceronian age of Latin, or the age of Aristotle and Plato in Greek.
But in both these cases, as indeed in that of every known ancient
people, the language, after reaching its acme of perfection, had begun
to decay and become debased: the golden age of Latinity had passed
into a silvern, and that into a brazen and an iron age. The fear was
that a like fate should overtake English also; to avert which calamity
the only remedy appeared to be to _fix the language_ by means of a
'Standard Dictionary,' which should register the proper sense and use
of every word and phrase, from which no polite writer henceforth would
be expected to deviate; but, even as generation after generation of
boys and men found their perfection of Latinity in the imitation of
Cicero, so all succeeding ages of Englishmen should find their ideal
of speech and writing fixed for ever in this standard dictionary. To
us of a later age, with our fuller knowledge of the history of
language, and our wider experience of its fortunes, when it has to be
applied to entirely new fields of knowledge, such as have been opened
to us since the birth of modern science, this notion seems childlike
and pathetic. But it was eminently characteristic of the eighteenth
century, an age of staid and decorous subsidence from the energetic
restlessness of the seventeenth--an age in which men eschewed
revolution and innovation, and devoted themselves assiduously to
conserve, consolidate, polish, refine, and make the best of what they
had.
In this notion of ascertaining, purifying, refining, and fixing the
language, England was only following in the wake of some other
countries. In Italy the _Accademia della Crusca_, and in France the
_Academie française_, had been instituted for this very purpose, and
the latter had, after twenty years of preparation, and forty more
years of work, published the first edition of a dictionary in which
the French language was (fondly and vainly) supposed to be thus
ascertained, sifted, and fixed for ever. England had no Academy; but
it was thought that what had been done in France by the Forty
Immortals might perhaps be done here by some leading man of letters.
The idea had, it appears, been put before Alexander Pope, and approved
by him; he is said even to have drawn up a list of the authors whose
writings might be taken as authorities for such a dictionary; but he
died in 1744, before anything further was done. The subject seems then
to have been pressed upon the attention of SAMUEL JOHNSON; but it was
not till 1747 that the matter took definite shape, when a syndicate of
five or six London booksellers contracted with Johnson to produce the
desired standard dictionary in the space of three years for the sum of
fifteen hundred guineas. Alas for human calculations, and especially
for those of dictionary makers! The work occupied nearly thrice the
specified time, and, ere it was finished, the stipulated sum had been
considerably overdrawn. At length, in 1755, appeared the two massive
folios, each 17 inches long, 10 inches wide, and 3-1/2 inches thick,
entitled 'A | Dictionary | of the | English Language | in which | the
Words are deduced from their Originals, | and | illustrated in their
different significations | by Examples from the Best Writers. | By
Samuel Johnson.' The limits of this lecture do not permit me to say
one tithe of what might and ought to be said of this great work. For
the present purpose it must suffice to point out that the special new
feature which it contributed to the evolution of the modern dictionary
was the illustration of the use of each word by a selection of
literary quotations, and the more delicate appreciation and
discrimination of senses which this involved and rendered possible.
Only where he had no quotations did Johnson insert words from Bailey's
folio, or other source, with _Dict._ as the authority. The literary
quotations were entirely supplied by himself from his capacious
memory, or from books specially perused and marked by him for
extraction. When he first began his work in the room in Gough Square,
his whole time was devoted to thus reading and marking books, from
which six clerkly assistants copied the marked quotations. The fact
that many of the quotations were inserted from memory without
verification (a practice facilitated by Johnson's plan of merely
naming the author, without specifying the particular work quoted, or
giving any reference whereby the passage could be turned up) is
undoubtedly the reason why many of the quotations are not verbally
exact. Even so, however, they are generally adequate for the purpose
for which they are adduced, that is, they usually contain the word for
which they are quoted, and the context is more or less accurately
rendered. But in some cases it is otherwise: Johnson's memory played
him false, and he quotes a passage for a word that it does not
actually contain. As an example, under _Distilment_ he correctly
quotes from _Hamlet_, 'And in the porches of mine ears did pour the
leperous distilment.' But when he reached _Instilment_, his memory
became vague, and forgetting that he had already quoted the passage
under _Distilment_, he quoted it again as 'the leperous instilment'--a
reading which does not exist in any text of Shakspere, and was a mere
temporary hallucination of memory. There are some other curious
mistakes, which must, I suppose, have crept in either in the course of
transcription or of printing. As specimens I mention two, because they
have unfortunately perverted ordinary usage. The two words _Coco_ and
_Cocoa_--the former a Portuguese word[12], naming the _coco-nut_, the
fruit of a palm-tree; the latter a latinized form of _Cacao_, the
Aztec name of a Central American shrub, whence we have cocoa and
chocolate--were always distinguished down to Johnson's time, and were
in fact distinguished by Johnson himself in his own writings. His
account of these in the Dictionary is quoted from Miller's _Gardener's
Dictionary_ and Hill's _Materia Medica_, in which the former is spelt
_coco_ and the latter _cacao_ and _cocoa_. But in Johnson's Dictionary
the two words are by some accident run together under the heading
_cocoa_, with the disastrous result that modern vulgar usage mixes the
two up, spells the _coco-nut_, 'cocoa-' as if it were _co-co-a_, and
on the other hand pronounces _cocoa_, the cacao-bean and the beverage,
as if it were _coco_. The word _dispatch_, from It. _dispaccio_, had
been in English use for some 250 years when Johnson's Dictionary
appeared, and had been correctly spelt by everybody (that is by
everybody but the illiterate) with dis-. This was Johnson's own
spelling both before and after he published the dictionary, as may be
seen in his _Letters_ edited by Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill[13]. It was also
the spelling of all the writers whom Johnson quoted. But by some
inexplicable error, the word got into the dictionary as _despatch_,
and this spelling was even substituted in most of the quotations. I
have not found that a single writer followed this erroneous spelling
in the eighteenth century: Nelson, Wellesley, Wellington, and all our
commanders and diplomatists wrote _Dispatches_; but since about 1820,
the filtering down of the influence of Johnson's Dictionary has caused
this erroneous spelling _despatch_ to become generally known and to be
looked upon as authoritative; so that at the present time about half
our newspapers give the erroneous form, to which, more larmentably,
the Post Office, after long retaining the correct official tradition,
recently capitulated.
But despite small blemishes[14], the dictionary was a marvellous piece
of work to accomplish in eight and a half years; and it is quite
certain that, if all the quotations had had to be verified and
furnished with exact references, a much longer time, or the employment
of much more collaboration, would have been required. With much
antecedent preparation, with much skilled co-operation, and with
strenuous effort, it took more than nine years to produce the first
three letters of the alphabet of the Oxford New English Dictionary.
Johnson's great work raised English lexicography altogether to a
higher level. In his hands it became a department of literature. The
value of the Dictionary was recognized from the first by men of
letters; a second edition was called for the same year. But it hardly
became a popular work, or even a work of popular fame, before the
present century. For forty years after its first publication editions
of Bailey followed each other as rapidly as ever; numerous new
dictionaries of the size and character of Bailey, often largely
indebted to Johnson's definitions, appeared. But the only new feature
introduced into lexicography between 1755 and the end of the century
was the indication of the Orthoepy or Pronunciation. From Bailey
onward, and by Johnson himself, the place of the stress-accent had
been marked, but no attempt had been made to show how such a group of
letters, for example, as _colonel_, or _enough_, or _phthisical_, was
actually pronounced; or, to use modern phraseology, to tell what the
_living word_ itself was, as distinguished from its written symbol.
This feature, so obviously important in a language of which the
spelling had ceased to be phonetic, was added by Dr. William Kenrick
in his 'New Dictionary' of 1773, a little later in 1775 by William
Perry, in 1780 by Thomas Sheridan, and especially in 1791 by John
Walker, whose authority long remained as supreme in the domain of
pronunciation, as that of Dr. Johnson in definition and illustration;
so that popular dictionaries of the first half of the present century
commonly claimed to be abridgements of 'Johnson's Dictionary, with,
the Pronunciation on the basis of Walker.'
From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the lexicographical
supremacy of Johnson's Dictionary was undisputed, and eminent students
of the language busied themselves in trying, not to supersede it, but
to supplement and perfect it. Numerous supplements, containing
additional words, senses, and quotations, were published; in 1818 a
new edition, embracing many such accessions, was prepared by the
learned Archdeacon Todd, and 'Todd's Johnson' continues to be an
esteemed work to our own day. But only two independent contributions
to the development of lexicography were made in the earlier half of
the nineteenth century. These were the American work of Noah Webster,
and the English work of Dr. Charles Richardson.
Webster was a great man, a born definer of words; he was fired with
the idea that America ought to have a dictionary of its own form of
English, independent of British usage, and he produced a work of great
originality and value. Unfortunately, like many other clever men, he
had the notion that derivations can be elaborated from one's own
consciousness as well as definitions, and he included in his work
so-called 'etymologies' of this sort. But Etymology is simply
Word-history, and Word-history, like all other history, is a record of
the _facts_ which _did_ happen, not a fabric of conjectures as to what
may have happened. In the later editions of Webster, these
'derivations' have been cleared out _en masse_, and the etymology
placed in the hands of men abreast of the science of the time; and the
last edition of Webster, the _International_, is perhaps the best of
one-volume dictionaries.
Richardson started on a new track altogether. Observing how much light
was shed on the meaning of words by Johnson's quotations, he was
impressed with the notion that, in a dictionary, definitions are
unnecessary, that quotations alone are sufficient; and he proceeded to
carry this into effect by making a dictionary without definitions or
explanations of meaning, or at least with the merest rudiments of
them, but illustrating each group of words by a large series of
quotations. In the collection of these he displayed immense research.
Going far beyond the limits of Dr. Johnson, he quoted from authors
back to the year 1300, and probably for the first time made Chaucer
and Gower and Piers Ploughman living names to many readers. And his
special notion was quite correct _in theory_. Quotations _will_ tell
the full meaning of a word, _if one has enough of them_; but it takes
a great many to be enough, and it takes a reader a long time to read
and weigh all the quotations, and to deduce from them the meanings
which might be put before him in a line or two. As a fact, while
Richardson's notion was correct in theory, mundane conditions of space
and time rendered it humanly impracticable. Nevertheless, the mass of
quotations, most of them with exact references, collected by him, and
printed under the word-groups which they illustrated, was a service
never to be undervalued or forgotten, and his work, 'A New Dictionary
of the English Language ... Illustrated by Quotations from the best
Authors' by Charles Richardson, LL.D., 1836-7, still continues to be a
valuable repertory of illustrations.
Such was the position of English lexicography in the middle of the
nineteenth century, when the late Dr. Trench, then Dean of
Westminster, who had already written several esteemed works on the
English language and the history of words, read two papers before the
Philological Society in London 'On some Deficiencies in existing
English Dictionaries,' in which, while speaking with much appreciation
of the labours of Dr. Johnson and his successors, he declared that
these labours yet fell far short of giving us the ideal English
Dictionary. Especially, he pointed out that for the _history_ of words
and families of words, and for the changes of form and sense which
words had historically passed through, they gave hardly any help
whatever. No one could find out from all the dictionaries extant how
long any particular word had been in the language, which of the many
senses in which many words were used was the original, or how or when
these many senses had been developed; nor, in the case of words
described as _obsolete_, were we told _when_ they became obsolete or
by whom they were last used. He pointed out also that the obsolete and
the rarer words of the language had never been completely collected;
that thousands of words current in the literature of the past three
centuries had escaped the diligence of Johnson and all his
supplementers; that, indeed, the collection of the requisite material
for a complete dictionary could not be compassed by any one man,
however long-lived and however diligent, but must be the work of many
collaborators who would undertake systematically to read and to
extract English literature. He called upon the Philological Society,
therefore, as the only body in England then interesting itself in the
language, to undertake the collection of materials to complete the
work already done by Bailey, Johnson, Todd, Webster, Richardson, and
others, and to prepare a supplement to all the dictionaries, which
should register all omitted words and senses, and supply all the
historical information in which these works were lacking, and, above
all, should give quotations illustrating the first and last
appearance, and every notable point in the life-history of every word.
From this impulse arose the movement which, widened and directed by
much practical experience, has culminated in the preparation of the
Oxford English Dictionary, 'A new English Dictionary on Historical
Principles, founded mainly on the materials collected by the
Philological Society.' This dictionary superadds to all the features
that have been successively evolved by the long chain of workers, the
historical information which Dr. Trench desiderated. It seeks not
merely to record every word that has been used in the language for the
last 800 years, with its written form and signification, and the
pronunciation of the current words, but to furnish a biography of each
word, giving as nearly as possible the date of its birth or first
known appearance, and, in the case of an obsolete word or sense, of
its last appearance, the source from which it was actually derived,
the form and sense with which it entered the language or is first
found in it, and the successive changes of form and developments of
sense which it has since undergone. All these particulars are derived
from historical research; they are an induction of facts gathered by
the widest investigation of the written monuments of the language. For
the purposes of this historical illustration more than five millions
of extracts have been made, by two thousand volunteer Readers, from
innumerable books, representing the English literature of all ages,
and from numerous documentary records. From these, and the further
researches for which they provide a starting-point, the history of
each word is deduced and exhibited.
Since the Philological Society's scheme was propounded, several large
dictionaries have been compiled, adopting one or more of Archbishop
Trench's suggestions, and thus showing some of the minor features of
this dictionary. They have collected some of the rare and obsolete
words and senses of the past three centuries; they have attained to
greater fullness and exactness in exhibiting the current uses of
words, and especially of the many modern words which the progress of
physical science has called into being. But they leave the _history_
of the words themselves where it was when Dr. Trench pointed out the
deficiencies of existing dictionaries. And their literary
illustrations of the older words are, in too many cases, those of Dr.
Johnson, copied from dictionary to dictionary without examination or
verification, and, what is more important, without acknowledgement, so
that the reader has no warning that a given quotation is merely
second-or third-hand, and, therefore, to be accepted with
qualification[15]. The quotations in the New English Dictionary, on
the other hand, have been supplied afresh by its army of volunteer
Readers; or, when for any reason one is adopted from a preceding
dictionary without verification, the fact is stated, both as an
acknowledgement of others' work, and as a warning to the reader that
it is given on intermediate authority.
Original work, patient induction of facts, minute verification of
evidence, are slow processes, and a work so characterized cannot be
put together with scissors and paste, or run off with the speed of the
copyist. All the great dictionaries of the modern languages have taken
a long time to make; but the speed with which the New English
Dictionary has now advanced nearly to its half-way point can
advantageously claim comparison with the progress of any other great
dictionary, even when this falls far behind in historical and
inductive character.[16] Be the speed what it may, however, there is
the consideration that the work thus done is done once for all; the
structure now reared will have to be added to, continued, and extended
with time, but it will remain, it is believed, the great body of fact
on which all future work will be built. It is never possible to
forecast the needs and notions of those who shall come after us; but
with our present knowledge it is not easy to conceive what new feature
can now be added to English Lexicography. At any rate, it can be
maintained that in the Oxford Dictionary, permeated as it is through
and through with the scientific method of the century, Lexicography
has for the present reached its supreme development.
In the course of this lecture, it has been needful to give so many
details as to individual works, that my audience may at times have
failed 'to see the wood for the trees,' and may have lost the clue of
the lexicographical evolution. Let me then in conclusion recapitulate
the stages which have been already indicated. These are: the glossing
of difficult words in Latin manuscripts by easier Latin, and at length
by English words; the collection of the English glosses into
Glossaries, and the elaboration of Latin-English Vocabularies; the
later formation of English-Latin Vocabularies; the production of
Dictionaries of English and another modern language; the compilation
of Glossaries and Dictionaries of 'hard' English words; the extension
of these by Bailey, for etymological purposes, to include words in
general; the idea of a Standard Dictionary, and its realization by Dr.
Johnson with illustrative quotations; the notion that a Dictionary
should also show the pronunciation of the living word; the extension
of the function of quotations by Richardson; the idea that the
Dictionary should be a biography of every word, and should set forth
every fact connected with its origin, history, and use, on a strictly
historical method. These stages coincide necessarily with stages of
our national and literary history; the first two were already reached
before the Norman Conquest; the third followed upon the recognition of
English as the official language of the nation, and its employment by
illustrious Middle English writers. The Dictionaries of the modern
languages were necessitated first by the fact that French had at
length ceased to be the living tongue of any class of Englishmen, and
secondly by the other fact that the rise of the modern languages and
increasing intercourse with the Continent made Latin no longer
sufficient as a common medium of international communication. The
consequences of the Renascence and of the New Learning of the
sixteenth century appear in the need for the Dictionaries of Hard
Words at the beginning of the seventeenth; the literary polish of the
age of Anne begat the yearning for a standard dictionary, and inspired
the work of Johnson; the scientific and historical spirit of the
nineteenth century has at once called for and rendered possible the
Oxford English Dictionary. Thus the evolution of English Lexicography
has followed with no faltering steps the evolution of English History
and the development of English Literature.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Thus the first six Latin words in A glossed are _apodixen_,
_amineæ_, _amites_, _arcontus_, _axungia_; the last six are _arbusta_,
_anser_, _affricus_, _atticus_, _auiaria_, _avena_; mostly 'hard'
Latin it will be perceived. The Erfurt Glossary is, to a great extent,
a duplicate of the Epinal.
[2] Thus the first five Latin entries in ab- are _abminiculum_,
_abelena_, _abiecit_, _absida_, _abies_, and the last five _aboleri_,
_ab borea_, _abiles_, _aborsus_, _absorduum_. To find whether a wanted
word in ab- occurs in this glossary, it was necessary to look through
more than two columns containing ninety-five entries.
[3] An important collection of these early beginnings of lexicography
in England was made so long ago as 1857, by the late distinguished
antiquary Thomas Wright, and published as the first volume of a
Library of National Antiquities. A new edition of this with sundry
emendations and additions was prepared and published in 1884 by
Professor R.F. Wülcker of Leipzig, and the collection is now generally
referred to by scholars in German fashion under the designation of
Wright-Wülcker.