LIDDELL AND SCOTT

By W. M. PARKER

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ACENTURY ago the educational world, especially that part of it devoted to the classics, was immeasurably enriched by the appearance of a great work of scholarship. In the summer of 1843 the Oxford University Press published the first edition of A Greek- English Lexicon, by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott. It was a thick quarto tome of 1,583 pages. Ever since that date it has been, as Mr. Langford Reed ironically remarked, "both a blessing and a bugbear to aspiring and perspiring students of the classics." Throughout these hundred years every schoolboy who has studied Greek has found it " a very present help in trouble." Indeed, it has been for so long an acknowledged standard dictionary of the subject that it is difficult to realise what an immense boon its advent signified. Hitherto Greek had been interpreted through Latin, and although attempts to compile a Greek-English lexicon were made by Donnegan, Giles, and Dunbar and Barker, they all proved inadequate. The time was, therefore, ripe for an authoritative work.

In the preface to the first edition the joint authors made known the educational aspiration which had prompted them to their task.. " We send it forth in the hope that it may in some wise foster and keep alive the accurate study of the Greek tongue ; that tongue which has been held one of the best instruments for training the young mind ; that tongue which, as the organ of Poetry and Oratory, is full of living force and fire, abounding in grace and sweetness, rich to overflowing . . . that tongue in which some of the noblest works of man's genius lie enshrined." Then, in the conclusion, they salute Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, which will carry his name wherever the English tongue is spoken. And we at least are well pleased to think that, if our book prove useful, it has been our lot to follow, however humbly, in the same career of usefulness that he chose for his own."

This comparison with Johnson brings to mind that whereas he spent seven years over his Dictionary, Liddell and Scott were engaged on the Lexicon for nine years, that is from about 1834 to the completion of the first edition in 1843—for work was maintained to the end of Liddell's life in 1898. When the collaborators began their Herculean task they had already qualified themselves by distinguished academic careers at Christ Church, Oxford. At first they could spare only a few hours each day, and worked from 7 to it p.m., one writing while the other searched for authorities in books and indexes. The labour was often well-nigh unbearable. As printing advanced, every page had to be scrutinised most carefully and all references verified. Unfortunately, the collaboration became more difficult when in 1840 Scott accepted a living at buloe, Cornwall. Thus the heavier part of the burden was, naturally, borne by Liddell, who was within such easy access to the Oxford libraries and the Clarendon.Press, and thus, also, there has been more known about Liddell than about Scott, who, after having been Master of Balliol and Dean of Rochester, died in 1887.

The Lexicon, indeed, was Liddell's great life's work, and he aimed to make the bulky volume as perfect as possible. The most striking innovation was a uniform alphabetical arrangement instead of the former system of word groups. It was necessary, of course, to give derivations, uses, metaphorical applications of each word with suit- able quotations front successive authors. All this required a wide and deep scholarship with an acute perception of those subtleties in

phraseology in which Greek abounds, et rare philological and anti- quarian knowledge, and, as a most essential addition, an indefatigable perseverance, undaunted by difficulties, delays, or weariness. Liddell possessed all these qualifications in an eminent degree. In the intervals between lectures he would stand at his desk over an inter- leaved copy of the first edition, correcting and amending it. Gradually the work came within sight of completion, and when at last the first edition of 3,000 copies appeared the demand exceeded all expectations.

In March, 1845, the work was subjected to a searching criticism in The Quarterly Review. While the reviewer praised the editors' research in certain Greek writers, he deplored that they had not consulted thi authors themselves, but had relied on imperfect indexes. But he conferred the highest praise on the abridged edition for school use, which had also appeared in 1843, and commented : " It is by much the best manual for beginners that has ever come from the press." That provision was thus made for the junior schoolboy is significant when it is remembered that in 1846 Liddell was induced to accept the Headmastership of Westminster School, which then needed drastic changes to bring it up to a better standard.

Revision of previous editions started with the fourth edition of 1855, the year when Liddell became Dean of Christ Church, and constructed a stately staircase in the Deanery called the Lexicon staircase, because its cost had been defrayed from profits on the book. The fifth edition came in 1861, the sixth, greatly augmented, in 1869, and the seventh in 1883. The eighth edition was ordered in 1895, but it did not appear till 1897. By 1899 it had been computed that there were more than twenty million letters, stops and accents in the volume. Although in 1897 Liddell was in his eighty-seventh year; he still wrote as clear a hand as ever and took the same care with accentuation. He just lived to see the results of his more than fifty years' toil in their latest published form before his death on January 18th, 1898.

On first thoughts, a lexicon or dictionary seems to be too prosaic a source for a poet's inspiration, and then we remember that Keats obtained much of his knowledge of Greek mythology from Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, and that the rather dull Eton anthology, Poetae Graeci, played a large part in fostering Swinburne's lave of poetry, as he himself declared. And so with a later poet, Thomas Hardy, for it was by perusing the fifth edition'of Liddell and Scott that he found his way in Greek before he began his literary career. Again, when in the summer of 1893 Liddell received the Hon. D.C.L. from Oxford, Hardy viewed the Commemoration proceedings in the Sheldonian Theatre, and after Liddell's death he wrote those amusing verses in which he visualised Liddell and Scott talking over the completion of their Lexicon. Perhaps the most touching tribute, in the form of wistful reminiscence, is to be found in Gissing's Henry Ryecroft, where he recalls his first acquaintance with the Lexicon. "My old Liddell and Scott still serves me, and if, in opening ft, I bend close enough to catch the scent of the leaves, I am back again at that day of boyhood . . . when the book was new and I used it for the first time. It was a day of summer, and perhaps there fell upon the unfamiliar page . . . a mellow Sunshine, which was to linger for ever in my mind."

After the eighth edition of 1897, fourteen years elapsed before Sir Henry Stuart Jones was invited by the Clarendon Press to undertake a revision, which he did in 1911. Although the earlier period, that of the actual writing, extended over thirteen years (1911-24), due to interruptions by the Great War, the later period, that of publication, in ten parts, was longer (1925-40). On the completion of the parts, this the ninth edition was issued in two volumes in July, 1940. Un- fortunately, neither Jones, the editor, nor his assistant, Roderick Mackenzie, lived to see the published results of their work. At the end of his preface, Jones said that the new edition was "in reality the work of many hands, and represents a great sacrifice of leisure and an earnest devotion to Greek learning on the part of the present generation of scholars." Thus the Lexicon has survived a hundred years, and, with its increased cumulative value, there is every reason to suppose it will last through another century. Without a rival, it has never become obsolete, nor, judged by the foregoing retrospect, is it ever likely to be superseded.