Читать книгу Birds and all Nature Vol VII, No. 3, March 1900 - Various - Страница 9

C. C. MARBLE

THIS may be called the age of dictionary making. All philological scholarship seems to culminate in historic derivation. Without referring invidiously to cultivated foreign languages, each of which has many such monuments of elaborate, accurate, and patient research, it may be said with confidence that the English language is unrivaled in its lexicographers, who at the close of the nineteenth century have completed works which only a few decades ago were not thought of as possible. Dr. Johnson prepared his unabridged dictionary in seven years "with little assistance from the great," an achievement which at the time excited wonder and admiration, though insignificant indeed in comparison with present performances. And yet there may be some doubt about the comparatively greater usefulness to the general reader of the bulky volumes of the modern publishers. In illustration the reader might find an analysis of one of the oldest English dictionaries an interesting example.

For several years I have had at hand "An Universal Etymological English Dictionary and Interpreter of Hard Words," by N. Bailey, 1747. On almost all occasions when I have needed to consult a dictionary I have found it satisfactory, some of its learning, on account of its very quaintnesses and contemporaneous character, being better adapted to a particular definition than modern directness. Perhaps its greatest defect is the absence from it of scientific terms, of which, however, there were very few at that time.