A Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words. By Walter W.
Skeet. (Clarendon Press. 5s. net.)—This posthumous parergon is the fruit of what a less "eager, enthusiastic spirit" than the late Professor Skeet might have called idle hours. Mr. A. L. Mayhew, who has devoted a year's solid labour to the revision and arrangement of Skeet's material, tells us that he once asked his old friend if he ever found time for recreation. " Well," said Skeet, "when I want to amuse myself, I take up some old play." But he always read his old play with pencil in hand and the needs of the less erudite in mind, "and when- ever he came to a word that might prove a stumbling-block to the general reader, he noted that word, and eventually wrote it on a separate slip with exact reference and explanation." At his death he left some seven thousand of these slips, from which Mr. Mayhew has made a book which will be of the greatest service to all students of our language.
Previous page
