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If there is any truth in the old Greek maxim that a large book is a great evil, English dictionaries have been steadily growing worse ever since their inception nearly four centuries ago. To set Cawdrey's slim small volume of 1604 beside the completed Oxford English Dictionary is like placing the original acorn beside the oak that has grown out of it.
The immensity of this growth is explained by the successive introduction of three new principles in lexicography. The earlier dictionary-makers followed in the line of the old glossaries, and directed their attention to such words as were likely to be unfamiliar to the ordinary person. The widening of this narrow range during the seventeenth century is made obvious by the steady increase in size through Bullokar, Cockeram, Blount, and Phillips, until in the eighteenth the principle of general inclusion was practically accepted by Kersey and Bailey. The next stage is marked by Johnson's systematic use of quotations to illustrate and justify the definitions, the many omissions still existing in the vocabulary being partly filled by later supplementary works on the same lines. When to all this was superadded the principle of historical illustration, introduced by Richardson, it became inevitable that any adequate dictionary of English must be one of the larger books of the world.
It is remarkable that Richardson's dictionary, perhaps through certain defects in his method, did not at once attract the attention it deserved. From the appearance of the first instalment in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana in 1819 to the full acceptance of the historical principle by the Philological Society almost forty years had passed, and the separate publication of his dictionary in 1836-7 did not affect to any appreciable extent the work of those lexicographers who followed in the wake of Johnson or Webster. Even his wealth of quotations remained unutilized, although they formed a natural storehouse for any who cared to search in it and bring forth ‘treasures new and old’ to add to those already available in the works of Johnson and his successors.
That a forward step was made towards the end of these forty years was due to the action taken by the Philological Society in the summer of 1857, apparently as the result of a suggestion made by F. J. Furnivall to Dean Trench in May. At the meeting held on 18 June ‘the appointment of Messrs. Herbert Coleridge and Furnivall and Dean Trench by the Council, as a committee to collect unregistered words in English, was announced, ant that they would report to the next Meeting of the Society in November’. At this stage the idea was to prepare and publish a volume supplementary to the later editions of Johnson, or to Richardson, and containing all words omitted in either of these dictionaries.
The committee did not report in November, but on the fifth of that month one of its members, Dean Trench, read the first part of a paper ‘On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries’, while the report was postponed till 3 December. This interval allowed the second part of the paper to be read on 19 November, when the Society showed its appreciation by resolving ‘That The Dean of Westminster be requested to publish his interesting and valuable Paper. To this request he kindly acceded.’ Publication followed almost immediately, the first edition bearing the date 1857 and the title ‘On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries, being the substance of two papers read before the Philological Society, Nov. 5 and Nov. 19, 1857. By Richard Chenevix Trench, D. D., Dean of Westminster.’
Even at this day, after the lapse of a hundred and fifty years and the advance in English studies which has taken place during that time, Dean Trench's paper retains its value as a statement of what an English dictionary ought to be. No one who reads it can fail to see how clearly he anticipated the lines on which the Society's dictionary was ultimately compiled - all of them, indeed, a necessary result from the historical principle which he laid down as the only sound basis for the work.
At the meeting of 3 December 1857, a report from the ‘Unregistered Words Committee was read by the Secretary to that Committee, Mr. H. Coleridge’. This was followed by the resolution ‘That for the present this Report be received and laid on the table. This resolution was passed in consequence of a statement that a larger scheme, for a completely new English Dictionary, might shortly be submitted to the Society.’ The Dean's paper had clearly convinced the Society of the inadequacy of its proposals, and had shown that nothing short of a ‘completely new’ work would suffice. In this natural way arose the epithet New which appeared on the title-page of the Dictionary when the time for publication arrived.
The Society lost no time in following up the new idea, little suspecting the magnitude of the task which lay before it, and the many years that would elapse before it would be completed, or even properly begun. On 7 January 1858, ‘the following resolutions were passed relating to the undertaking of a New English Dictionary.
As is indicated in the third of these resolutions, the Unregistered Words Committee had been remarkably successful, during its brief existence, in arousing interest in the Society's undertaking, and in enlisting willing helpers to aid in carrying it out. Towards the close of his paper as printed, Dean Trench had been able to make an encouraging statement on this head. ‘Let me mention here that seventy-six volunteers have already come forward, claiming their shares in the task. A hundred and twenty-one works of English authors, in most cases the whole works of each author, have been taken in hand by them; and I may add that thirty-one contributions have already been sent in.’ In this way began the system of voluntary readers, without whose help the material for the Society's dictionary could never have been collected at all, except at a prohibitive cost of time and money.
At the meeting on 21 January 1858, ‘Mr. Furnivall read a circular which the New Dictionary Committee proposed to issue, stating the plan of the Dictionary and asking for help in carrying it out’. It does not appear whether the circular was actually issued, and further notices in the Transactions for that year are brief and unimportant. A glimpse of the progress that was being made is afforded by a passage in Coleridge's letter to Dean Trench (30 May 1860), which was printed in the second edition of the Dean's paper. ‘More than a year passed away in combating various difficulties, and it was not till August 1858, that we felt ourselves in a position to announce the plan of a New Dictionary as a certainty, and to invite contributors to furnish us with assistance.’ Negotiations with publishers had been carried on during the year, first with John Murray, and then with David Nutt; finally on 4 November, Furnivall ‘stated that Messrs. Trübner & Co. had agreed to publish the Society's New English Dictionary’. The young co-workers, for both Furnivall and Coleridge were still in early manhood, had not only all the optimism of youth, but were embarking on an uncharted sea, quite unwitting of the long course which had to be sailed before the farther shore could even come into sight.
By 1859 the Committee was able to publish full details of the undertaking in the form of a ‘Proposal for the Publication of a New English Dictionary by the Philological Society’. This document is a proof of the thoroughness and sound judgement with which the whole question had been considered. Opening with a review of the steps by which the idea of a ‘new’ dictionary had been reached, the authors of the Proposal went on to lay down certain principles as a basis for the work, of which the two most important are the first and fourth, viz.
I. The first requirement of every lexicon is that is should contain every word occurring in the literature of the language it professes to illustrate.
IV. In the treatment of individual words the historical principle will be uniformly adopted.
Other contents of the Proposal are ‘Rules and Directions for Collectors’ as agreed upon by the Literary, Historical, and Etymological Committees, and ‘Mechanical and Practical Regulations’. These are 1. ‘A list of the printed literature of England belonging to the period 1250-1526,’ with the added note, ‘Those works marked with an asterisk are already undertaken’. 2. ‘A list of works of the Second Period (1526-1674) already undertaken’. 3. A similar list of ‘works of the Third Period (1674-1858) already undertaken’. This division of the literature into three periods, which originated with Coleridge and was maintained for some time as a basis of collecting, has a real foundation in fact. Although the dates 1526 and 1674 were chosen because the former was that of the first printed English New Testament, and the latter the year of Milton's death, they correspond very closely with significant epochs in the development of the English vocabulary. If arrived at by accident, they at the same time show a sound instinct for detecting the periods of essential change.
The volunteers were also beginning to play their part, and to provide the Committee with material to work upon. ‘In April 1859 a paper containing queries respecting etymologies and several difficult passages from Early English books was circulated among members of the Society and contributors to the Dictionary, and conjectures in answer were invited ... So much of the results of this appeal as the Dictionary Committee consider sufficiently valuable, and sufficiently certain to be worth printing’ was reported to the Society by Coleridge in a paper entitled ‘Hints towards the explanation of some hard words and passages in English writers’. On 10 November of the same year, Coleridge, now formally appointed as editor, presented a ‘report on the Society’s proposed Dictionary’.
The following month saw another forward step, when on 8 December the Society resolved:
The Committee, or Coleridge himself on its behalf, set to work at once and prepared a draft of the rules, which was discussed, enlarged, and modified, at meetings held in December 1859 and January 1860, further considered and revised in April and May, and finally printed with the title of ‘Canones Lexicographici, or rules to be observed in editing the New English Dictionary of the Philological Society’. Continued interest in the work is also shown by a paper read on 10 May, ‘Observations on the plan of the Society's proposed new English Dictionary, by the Revd Derwent Coleridge’, and by the appearance of a second edition of Dean Trench's two papers ‘revised and enlarged. To which is added a letter to the author from Herbert Coleridge, Esq., on the progress and prospects of the Society's New English Dictionary.’
This letter is interesting as a survey of what had so far been accomplished, and closes on a confident note. ‘I believe that the scheme is now firmly established, and I confidently expect ... that in about two years we shall be able to give our first number to the world. Indeed, were it not for the dilatoriness of many contributors ... I should not hesitate to name an earlier period.’ Here also comes the first mention of co-operation from the English-speaking nation on the other side of the Atlantic. ‘The Hon. G. P. Marsh of Burlington, Vermont, having kindly offered to act as Secretary in America, I at once suggested that the Americans should make themselves responsible for the whole of the eighteenth-century literature, which probably would have a less chance of finding as many readers in England. This was agreed to, ... and contributors are, as I understand, coming in, but no results of their labours have reached us yet.’ The suggestion was not a fortunate one, and was never seriously taken up.
By this time, on the basis of the material already sent in by contributors and of the existing dictionaries, Coleridge was hard at work preparing word-lists to serve as a guide in further collecting. The ‘Third Period’ was selected for this purpose, and by 14 February 1861, he was able to lay before the Society the first part of this ‘Basis of Comparison’, covering the letters A to D. The preliminary notice to this in its printed form is signed by Coleridge, and its publication was unfortunately the last of his valuable contributions to the progress of the work. On Thursday, 25 April, ‘Mr. Furnivall announced the death on the preceding Tuesday of Herbert Coleridge, Esq., the Editor of the Society's New English Dictionary’. When the second part of the ‘Basis of Comparison’ (E to L) appeared later in the year, the prefectory note, dated 25 September, and signed by Furnivall, opened with these words: ‘Since the publication of the First Part of this Basis, our proposed Dictionary has received a severe blow by the death of its first Editor, the able and accomplished Herbert Coleridge. In its service he caught the cold which resulted in his death. All through his illness he worked for it whenever leisure and strength allowed; and his last attempt at work - two days before he died - was to arrange some of its papers.’
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