A Triumph of Scholarship

IT is hard to believe our eyes when we see that the greatest single enterprise of scholarship the world has known is now completed. 'There is something a little sad in -considerhig that we shall have no more of those instalments of learning, those treasures of language, which have come periodically into the world during forty-four years. The task is ended ; the age of discovery has passed.

No other nation has ever completed so large an under-

taking. The New English Dictionary contains half a million definitions and nearly two million quotations. The meaning of words is illustrated from the time of William the Conqueror, or even earlier, to the present day. We have, therefore, great 'conspectus of the grimith of our speech, through the

period of its flourishing to our own time, when it is most _ .

multiple, dispersed and intricate. Language is the chief his- torical monument of a race, its most essential gift to ciViliza- tion ; and, in a measure, this dictionary can be called the chief repository of the English spirit.

The sections dealing with X, Y and Z have been issued already ; Wise-Wyzen finishes the wurk. The whole dic- tionary is now available to anyone who can squeeze fifty guineas out of his pocket, or consult it at a library. All that

remains to do is to print a supplement of the words which have sprung rip. into the language since the Dictionary was

printed ; and to hold a dinner at which the scholars who haVe contributed to it will say farewell to labours which have often taken up the devotion Of a lifetime.

The section which rounds off the dictionary is by no means one Of the least important. How Could it be when it deals with women ' and words, wonder and woe ? In some ways, indeed, it is the most interesting of all to stray through, being full of good native formations and very English coinages: The letter to was a stumbling-block to incorners ; the Normans theinselVes could never get round it, changing warrant to guarantee, and ward to guard. There are words here which are not paralleled even in the Germanic languages ; worship and witness, for example; or that same portentous woman, or wife-man.

As we look through these old English words, many of which have gone from popular currency, we see how unsafe it is to describe any truly-rooted word as dead. Some of them sleep for a while in dialectS, in ancient books ; and suddenly rise again and take on a new life. There was worsen, for example, a word which had passed altogether from literature until Wordsworth, Southey and de Quincey, sick of ponderous terms like' deteriorate, put it forward again, and even the Times and the Spectator took to using it.

It is queer, too, to observe that there is no quotation for out of work between Shakespeare and the Daily News of 1886 ; and Still queerer to see a fifteenth-century author writing up his experiences just as a modern journalist might. America has invented, or given us back, many good and vivid idioms ; it is from America that we imported, within the

last forty years, the phrase, " I ran for all I was worth." •

The saddest history of decline attends the worm. He was a dragon once, and sometimes moved on wings. At other times he crawled on his belly as a serpent ; the foul fiend himself was a worm. It was proper in those days to mention him as the " wild worm "—Langland writes of " wild worms in woods." But, more and more, as time went on, he became the " poor worm " we - know so well to-day ; as the editors call him, " object of contempt, scorn, or pity ; an abject, miserable creature."

It is an interesting exercise to trace through the different meanings of some common word ; an exercise calling for an intensity of logical imagination. None in this section is richer in variety than the verb to work. We talk of a trout "working up stream," Of a face "working with sorrow," of " working like yeast," and of " working on people's feelings." As befits a word so old and honourable, there are many other applications : medicine works in the stomach, a canvasser works a district, a schoolboy works a sum. There are thirty-nine main definitions of the verb in this dictionary, and a multitude of sub-definitions.

The last word of substance that engaged the attention of the editors, apart from monstrosities of spelling, is wyvern, an heraldic animal of obscure parentage, but first cousin to the wcrrm. A certain Sir John Conyers, Knt., is recorded as having slain one ; but this is the only time it came to life from coats-of- arms. George Meredith made a gallant attempt to get in last by describing the Demon's wings as " like the fins of a wyver-fish," a beast known only to himself ; but the wyvern beat him.

We note, by the way, that in an appendix to the letter V printed in this section, the Spectator is quoted for the earliest figurative use of the word vitamin. "The vitamines of litera- ture," wrote a reviewer seven years ago ; and the metaphor so pleased him, or another reviewer, that within a month there followed, " the vitamines of the spirit and of true religion."