THE LEXICOGRAPHER'S COMPENSATIONS

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20956, 9 September 1933, Page 15

THE LEXICOGRAPHER'S COMPENSATIONS

o (l.v Ko.-i; .M.HWIUY in 1 lie •■Week-end llcvi.y.v.") "Every other author," said Dr. Johnson, sourly, '-may aspire to praise: the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompence has been yet granted to very few." Looking through a useful little book called "A Survey of English Dictionaries" and through some of the dictionaries to which it calls attention, one is reminded that this is a very old complaint. One perceives, in many of those somewhat disingenuous forewords prefixed to dictionaries, a shrinking, timid, almost cringing note. The authors erect between themselves and their public defensive barricades of complimentary addresses. Or else they try. to carry it off with boasting, with great swelling words about how their dictionarv" is the best in the world, as did Edward Phillips and the Rev. John Wesley. But mostly they have the air of craving the mercy of a public known to be misolexicographical in temper. They say they have been "persuaded by friends to publish what was intended but for private use." On this habit of his fellow lexicographers Peter Levens. of Magdalen College, commented somewhat acidly when, in 1570, he produced his "Manipulus Vocabulorum": "Some writers say to excuse their rashness that it is by their friends' cnunsell, or some other cause. This thing whether they do in simplicitie of hart and sinccritie, or some of them for some other cause, I cannot judge, but I do excuse myscli'c that I follow not the low steps of such humilitic, because the truth is " that he published his dictionary because he wanted to. Besides thus shifting the blame, the poor lexicographers often make touching appeals for fair play. "I could likewise wish." says John Minsheu, by Ben Jonson termed a rogue, and certainly a most eloquent etymologist, "(though not likely to obtaine). readers without gaule or bitternesse, ready to excuse, slow to condemne. full of charitable spirit, voide of their own vaines and opinions." What a hope! .. . "If any fault-finder or over curious Criticke," wrote Dr. Bullaker, with some spirit, in 1616', introducing his "English Expositor," "shall to show his skill grow captious and quarrel I at my interpretations, I will desire him to forbear bitterness, and temper a while his choler"—till he has done some work himself, and given others occasion to say. Medico, cura teipsum. Did the captious critic so? It is to be feared not. One such, anyhow, commented on a passage in the "Expositor," "What have we here? The hazardous idle pliancies of a moon's man. or (he duneicall vapourings of a punie?" Nevertheless, the "Expositor" proved popular, and became what has been called, disapprovingly, "an absolute best-seller," running through 13 editions in a century. Minsheu was also popular. Everyone was interested and pleased to know that "Cockney" was derived from that ignorant citizen's son, who, riding into the country, heard a horse neigh and afterwards a cock crow, and said to his father, "Doth the cock neigh too?" Indeed, on the whole. Dr. Johnson's "harmless drudge" has not met with ingratitude, for lexicophilcs are numerous and assiduous. Say what they may about their troubles, their captious critick, their reluctance to publish, their drudgery, and their divers oppressions, lexicographers have their pleasures. Who has never sat down (even if, as is most probable and usual, he never finished his mighty task or even got so far as D) to compile a dictionary of his native tongue? For the most part, this is now done in early youth, for the standard of lexicography is grown so alarmingly high that adults are daunted by it. The early English lexicographers went to it boldly, with no nonsense about including all words; they only put in a small selection, a kind of anthology, omitting the words that bored them, or that they failed to understand. And this is the plan that one adopts at the age of 12 or j so, not emulating the scope of the j Oxford Dictionary, or even of Nut- ) tail's. But the intoxicating feeling of scholarly power that sweeps over the lexicographer as he or she starts with a large A must surely be common to Sir James Murray, Dr. Johnson, John Wesley, John Minsheu, and the dictionary-makers of all ages. To be the self-appointed colonel of the whole army of words, to dragoon and order them at one's pleasure, interpret them as one chooses, decide their pronunciations and their spelling, write "vulg." after those used by one's enemies, "obs." after those one is tired of, invent those that should exist and do not—there, as Humpty Dumpty j said, is glory for you. Further, there's your opportunity for insult, for revenge, for scoring off your foes, for defining tapioca as "A nasty pudding, made of lumps," vermicelli as "yellow worms cooked," skin as "horrible stuff that comes on milk." Dr. Johnson, as everyone knows, did well at this, with his excise, "a hateful tax" assessed by "hired wretches," his oats, the food in England of horses and in Scotland of the people, his Whig, "the name of a faction," whereas Tory is "one who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England. Opposed to a Whig." Thus he scores off the gentleman who remarked derisively that a Tory was a being generated between a non-juring I parson and one's grandmother. And such scores as these were, I suspect, his true reason for compiling a Dictionary. For, to find the real reasons which have impelled lexicographers to their tasks, one must look behind their printed prefaces, the friends who persuaded them, the wish to be of help to young students, and the rest of the humbug of this dissembling crew. Look in their hearts and you shall find malice and vanity and all uncharitableness. Robert Cawdrey, for instance, apparently a misoclere, wrote his "Table Alphabetical" in 1604 to put preachers in their place, "that they never affect strange inkhorne tearmes, but labour to speake so as is commonly received." Edward Phillips wrote his New World of Words" to outsell Thomas Blount's "Glossographia," from which he copied, and to disparage Latinised English, thus paying out his uncle, John Milton. The Rev. John Wesley wrote his Dictionary (one supposes) that he might define Predestination, Grace, and Free Will as he liked, without being supervised by Whitefield. Francis Grose and other slang and cantlexicographers merely wished to be vulgar. While the anonymous author of "Gazophylacium Anglicanum" (1689) confesses that he employed himself therein "to save my Time from being worse employed"; which may cover anything. But, in the main, it is love of power, the desire for mastery, for imposing their will on the universe