English Dictionaries, 1604–1755

98 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY To sum up our contention in a word. Mr. Bate has presented as synthesis what is really thesis; he has omitted the antithesis; and the proof that he has done so is his failure to give any adequate account of such varied figures as Shaftesbury, Blake, the later Wordsworth, the later Coleridge , Shelley, or to find a satisfactory place for them in his synthesis. Nothing in all this is to be construed as taking away. from our former praise of Mr. Bate's treatment of the material which falls within the scope of his thesis and which he elects to consider. That treatment is indeed admirable, and it brought new light to us at a number of points. We do not see how it could be bettered unless by a somewhat fuller consideration of the previous history of some of the terms used (notably, imagination). Indeed within its limits no more penetrating and suggestive book has ever been written on the evolution of Romanticism. ENGLISH DICTIONARIES, 1604-1755* DoRIS B. SAuNDERS He who reads this scholarly yet unpedantic survey of The Englilh Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson will nev~r again take for granted the contents of his modern dictionary, but will see it as the culmination of the work of a long line of lexicographers. The authors speak with authority. Dr. Starnes, a graduate of Chicago, and Professor of English at the University of Texas, has made a special study of medieval and Renaissance dictionaries, and his collaborator, Miss Noyes, a graduate of Yale, and Associate Professor of English at Connecticut College, has published n;J.any papers on lexicography in philological journals. It was, indeed, "wise economy" for these two authors to pool the fruits of their ten years' research in the libraries of the United States and England. Their aiins as stated in the Foreword sound most ambitious: Of the dictionaries, expositors, and glossographies which were printed between 1604 and 1755, the authors give, within the stated limitations, as full, spe'tific, and accurate information as they have been able to a.scertain. The qualifications of dictionary-makers for the tasks which they set for themselves, their expressed aims (as far as possible in the language of the compilers themselves), their sources, their methods of compilation, the interrelationships of the various texts, the relation of English dictionaries to contemporary bilingual dictionaries, the readers for whom each work is intended, the vogue and usefulness of the various dictionaries-these are among the more important topics treated in this book. Even a cursory reading will reveal that these aims have been adequately realized. That the authors are familiar with the work of their predecessors is obvious from their admission of indebtedness to such scholars as Henry B. 'Vheatley) Sir James A. H. IVIurray, Dr. Percy W. Long, Mr. M. M. *The English Dictionaryfrom Cawdr~y to Johnson,l6M-1755. By DE WITT T. STARNEs and GEll.TRUDE E. NoYES. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1946. Pp. xii, 300. ($3.50) REVIEWS 99 Mathews, Professor Arthur G. Kennedy, Mr. Ernest Weekley, and numerous others referred to in. the Bibliography and Notes. The format of the book is most attractive. Special mention must be made of the sixteen plates-facsimile reproductions of the title-pages,, and others, of the dictionaries studied. The division of the text into twentytwo chapters, each dealing with a specific dictionary (with the exception of the first chapter which sketches the background for the study), makes the survey particularly easy to follow. The generosity of the authors is evident in the inclusion of three appendices, one an article on "Medieval and Renaissance Vocabularies" by Dr. Starnes, one on "The Development of Cant Lexicography in England, 1566-1785" by Miss Noyes, and the third a valuable "Bibliography and Census of Dictionaries in American Libraries." The beginnings of the dictionary are traced to the interlinear glosses of the Middle Ages, and to the bilingual dictionaries of the type of the Promptorium Parvulorum, siue Clericorum (ca. 1440) used by boys preparing for the ministry. It was not then the custom to arrange the words alphabetically , for as late as 1553 John Withals...