PROFESSOR KEY'S LATIN DICTIONARY.*
EVERY one will join with the editor in regretting the long delay which has postponed the appearance of this work till the twelfth year from the author's death. But it is a delay for which it is easy to account. The first idea of Professor Key's literary executors was to have his unfinished dictionary completed. This was natural enough. It was right that the public should have all the advantage of work on which a singularly able and ingenious scholar had spent so much labour. But in process of time it became evident that the dictionary, when thus completed, would be no longer Professor Key's. If any blame is to be bestowed in the affair, it is that this obvious fact was not seen sooner. A few figures will make the matter plain. The total contents of the volume, as it now appears, stand to those of Messrs. Lewis and Short's Dictionary in about the proportion of two to seven. But the proportion of the letter "A," which Professor Key had nearly finished, may be reckoned as about nine to thirteen. The proportion, that is, of the finished or nearly finished part is more than two-thirds, that of the unfinished less than one-third. In some letters it will be found to be far smaller. In " C," for instance, Professor Key has twenty-four pages only, to Lewis and Short's two hundred and fifty-two. Hence the additions would have sometimes largely exceeded the ,original matter. Ultimately, the right course of printing the author's manuscript as nearly as possible as it stood was followed, and we have in consequence not exactly a Latin dictionary—for many common words are wholly wanting—but a very interesting series of alphabetically arranged articles on a number of Latin words. (We are inclined to regret the too pious following of the author's practice of *A Latin-English Dicttonary. Printed from the Unfinished MS. of the late Thomas Hewitt Key, ALA., Cambridge University Press.
writing Greek without accents or even aspirates.) Latterly, when advancing years and decreasing strength made it evident to the author that the work, as he had planned it, could. never be completed, he applied himself to " those words throughout the alphabet which he considered to require special or novel treatment." From this point of view the book has some- thing like completeness, though we have looked in vain for not a few words on which we should have been glad to know Professor Key's opinion, as, e.g., for the augural words omen and proepes. But for what we have got we have much reason to be thankful. Professor Key did not " ground " his dictionary upon any one else's work. It is his own, and marked by his own originality, if sometimes a little audacious in conjecture. The article on unio, though the word is not particularly important, is a characteristic instance of his merits as a lexicographer. He begins by pointing out its diminu- tive character. It is "a little one," as the number one on a die. From this we get to " a single pearl," as opposed to a necklace (monile),—for monile he gives a Celtic analogue, own-wg, the " neck." Then we have the signification of "a large pearl, as itself a sufficient ornament ;" then its use as a surname (of which Lewis and Short take no notice) ; finally, " an onion as one of a rope, or a kind of onion that has no bulbs growing by its side." The article ungula, again, will be found to contrast favourably with what other dictionaries tell us. Its use as " a bird's claw" is put first, its proper place, both from the point of view of usage and of logic. Then we have " More com- monly the hoof as opposed to the nails of those creatures which have fingers." The strange fancy, in which the dic- tionary-makers have followed Forcellini, that it stands for a horse, in " Carceribus missos rapit nngula currus," is properly dismissed. Instances are given in succession of its use of the ox, the hog, and the pig's pettitoe,—this last being a distinctive addition, differing from other usages because the word is here applied to flesh, " Ex oleribus porrum, ex came ungulas." In flustra, the ordinary dictionary meaning of the " usual quiet state of the sea, a calm " (Lewis and Short), is corrected into " a ground-swell of the sea," evidently the sense of the passage which Lewis and Short quote as the authority for their own rendering, " Flustra motus maris sine tempestate fluctuantis," a rendering which really depends upon the definition preserved by Festus, " Flnstra dicuntur cum in maxi fluctus non moventur, good Grmci f.4arozsicts vocant."
It is, of course, in the variety and ingenuity of Professor Key's etymological conjectures that much of the special value of his book will be found to lie. It was a loss, indeed, that he was born in what may be called a pre-Sanscrit age. It would be too much to say that he had a prejudice against Sanscrit derivations ; but he certainly regarded them with less favour than did some other scholars. The present writer has a vivid recollection of keen encounters on this subject between him and the late Professor Goldstiicker, a Sanscrit scholar of the first order, in the early days of the Philological Society. Apart from this peculiarity, if it may be so called, Professor Key was a felicitous, if somewhat bold etymologist. Instances of this excellence are, of course, frequent in this volume. One of them will be found in the interesting word lustrum. The lexicographers treat it as a homonym,—(l), a bog, haunt of wild beasts, woods generally, place of debauchery, debauchery generally ; (2), purification, time of purification, period of years, five, four, or a hundred (with qualification ingens). But they give the derivation of both as luo. Pro- fessor Key, on the contrary, derives the first of the two from volvo, the fall form being volustrum, quoting (as do the lexi- cographers, but without seeing its significance), " Prodigunt in lustra at volutentur in luto." The'verb lustro he regards as another homonym. The connection of lustrare," to illuminate," with lux is, indeed, sufficiently obvious ; but it is not found in Lewis and Short, who regard the word as identical in its two meanings. Color Professor Key connects, not with cal, " to cover," as seen in caligo, calyx, &c., but with cor of corium„ and ;OP of xpe:).;. Hence its first meaning comes out as " skin," and thence "colour of the skin." A more taking suggestion is the connection of polluo with poro:/prd, rather than luo, lavo. There can hardly be any hesitation about accepting this. (It is a positive disappointment not to find any mention of Professor Key's amusing suggestion of pollex from pro-licio, the " drawing forth " member, a conjecture which he used to illustrate by the nursery-rhyme of Jack Homer, who " put in his thumb and pulled out a plum.") The article viecus (viscera) supplies a good instance of the illuminating effect of a reasonable deriva- tion. Lewis and Short give : " Prop. the soft parts ; cf. : viscum, viscidus,"—that is to say, they refer back a word that must have been in very common use, to so very special a term as that for birdlime, itself connected with the word for the plant mistletoe. This really only needs to be stated to be condemned. Professor Key has: "What one eats of animals, flesh, meat," agreeing therein with Servius's definition, " Viscera aunt quid quid inter ossa et cntem est ;" and adds a note : " When caro for the wealthy superseded viscus in the general sense of meat, viscus still remained for the meat of the poor man, the viscera, heart, lights, liver," and quotes appropriately from Celsus " Septum transversum a superioribns visceribus intestina discernit." Under adoro we have :—" Not a compound of ad and oro ; but from ad os ; to raise the right hand to the mouth, and then wheel round to the right, as an act of religious worship." This has an attractive appearance, but it ignores the definition of Servins, "Adorare veteribns est alloqui," and of Festus, "Adorare apud antinuos significabat agere." The grammarians, indeed, were often uncritical, but the Twelve Tables had," Si adorat farto quod nec manifestnm erit," where it must be equivalent to "accuse," and makes a strong argument for the ad oro derivation. We have, unfortunately, no means of knowing what Professor Key thought of these passages, of which he makes no mention. In the puzzling word stringo, where it is diffi- cult to bridge over the chasm between the meanings to " bind" and to " scrape " or "graze," he makes the suggestion of a homonym, the meanings of " grazing," " touching," "wounding," "stripping" belonging to a distinct verb, connected with the German streifen, and perhaps the root ter (" rub"). He connects such usages as stringere frondes and stringers gladiola with that of " touching," by the suggestion that plucking leaves and drawing a sword are done by the com- pression of the fingers. But might not this connect them with the sense of " binding" ? For formica, Professor Key suggests fero as giving the meaning of "the little porter ;" pellex he regards as connected with 7.-Zitoc, pullus, &c., and so as being an euphemism, "a little one ;" feria and festus he connects with xecipeo, taking no account of the Sanscrit bhas, " to shine ;" and dunstaxat he explains as equal to dun's tazat, i.e., tangaf, "till it touches."
Enough has been said to show the value, though doubtless the very variable value, of Professor Key's Dictionary, a dictionary, indeed, only in intention, but a book, nevertheless, which a scholar will hardly be able to dispense with.
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