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Show Monks Compiled Early Dictionaries. Dr. J. A. H. Murray,-editor of the "Xew English Eng-lish Dictionary," told his hearers a great many interesting in-teresting things about dictionaries in the course of a recent lecture. The word "dictionarium," he said, appeared first in 1225, and though "dictionary" "diction-ary" was used in its modern sense in 1542, it; had not then ousted the more correct word-"vocabulary," or the fanciftd titles which early compilers liked to employ. The contents of the earliest dis-tionaries dis-tionaries were not arranged in alphabetical order, but under subject headings; it is. only since the end of the sixteenth century that the alphabetical arrangement has Jjeconio universal in Europe an arrangement which is responsible for the wrongful wrong-ful application of the title "dictionary" to any work treating of subjects e. g., cabinet-making or national biography in alphabetical order. A dictionary is properly a book without words. The average person seems somehow to think of dictionaries as the invention of Dr. Johnson and an altogether modern product. Dr. Murray corrected correc-ted that idea. They were not the work of one or ' of several men, he told his audience, but a growth developed through the ages. They began with the glosses that is, the explanations in easv,Latin or English of hard Latin words written by ihe monks between the lines of the manuscripts. , The glosses grew into translations, and collections ol glosses by this monk or that from all the; sources available" to him made glossaries or dictionaries. Little by little English supplanted the easy Latin explanations, and the words were arranged m a rudimentary alphabetical order.-thus -forming, so long ago as 1000 A. D. Latin-English diction- 31 The first book villi the title- of ."An Engl-'sh Dictionarv" was published in 1(J2:5. Such. works were mainlv compiled for the use of "women and other unskillful persons." In the year 1721 appeared ap-peared the first attempt at a complete dictionary of the Enelish language: remarkable also for the introduction of the etymological, treatment ot words that of Nathaniel Bailey. His .folio edi-. tion, published in 1730, was the working basis. of Dr. Johnson's dictionary. In the reign of . Anne : an age of rest and subsidence from troubles when the language had reached maturity, the demand arose for a standard dictionary which should fix for ever (u childlike and pathetic aim) the correct cor-rect Usage. Pope interested himself in the plan. It fell to Johnson to execute it, at v. cosfv of limo,-. labor and. money that-far exceeded the original calculations cal-culations of himself or his syndicate of booksellers. booksell-ers. The specially new feature of the work was the quotations, all gathered by Johnson himself and copied by six assistants. They were printed without verification or reference, and the proofs were not carefully read, hence many curious errors. |