THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JULY, 1859.

ART. I-LATIN LEXICOGRAPHY.

A new Latin-English School Lexicon on the Basis of the Latin-German Lexicon of Dr. C. F. Ingerslev. By G. R. CROOKS, D.D.. late Adjunct-Professor of Languages in Dickinson College; and A. J. SCHEM, A. M., Professor of Hebrew and Modern Languages in Dickinson College. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1859.

FROM the fact that the Latin classies form part of the sources of our own and modern European culture; that they are excellent drill-masters of the intellect, and form a harmonizing equipoise to the study of the physical sciences; that they constitute a large and important element in our own and other modern languages; that often the thorough knowledge of a subject involves a knowledge of its historic development, which history lies in the Latin; that they are the best of a large literature, time having kindly destroyed the worst; that without them the student cannot be fully admitted into the real life, the inmost nature, of the grave, aggressive, objective, and practical Roman, whose character, and in a great measure the language, is to this day perpetuated in a degenerate Church, with its excess of concrete symbolism, its official genealogy, external pomp, and justification by works: these facts, together with the intrinsic excellence of the literature itself, will guarantee for the Latin classics, not a pre-eminent, but a co-ordinate position in a system of liberal culture; and without them one must feel, to the extent of that loss, like an alien in the commonwealth of letters. The lexicon at the head of this article professes to give an easy, and rapid, yet thorough and scholarly, introduction to this language. These claims, together with the wide popularity of its German prototype, which has gained the praise of eminent German critics, and has been translated FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XI.-23

into Dutch, demand more than a passing notice; and especially so since the authors, instead of making a servile translation of the German work of Ingerslev, claim it only as the basis of a more thorough work and one better adapted to the wants of students. We shall return more directly to the lexicon itself after giving a brief historical sketch of Latin lexicography.

Among the Greeks the sophists are said to have given the first effective impulse to lexical studies, and after these the grammarians. The term grammarian is best defined by the terms philologist and critic, for his labors extended over the broad field of interpretation, revision, criticism, compilation, and research into the origin and structure of language. Words that were peculiar in form or signification the grammarians style λées. Words obsolete, difficult, rare, foreign, or provincial they styled yaoooat. Hence the origin and application of the terms lexicon and glossary to such and similar collections of words. There were lexicons of this imperfect sort among the Greeks, before the Roman conquest; Homeric lexicons particularly, in which the Greek youth sought for elucidations of their great poet. The Romans, stimulated by the lectures and example of Crates Mallotes of Cilicia, about 158 B. C., began in earnest to study the etymology and grammar of their own language, and to write critical commentaries on their own prose writers and poets. Being acquainted with the Greek language, and the labors and methods of the Greek grammarians, they made quite a rapid progress in their philological studies, the results of which were included sometimes in their commentaries and sometimes in separate treatises.

Among the Romans lexicography had its most marked beginning in the elucidation of the meaning and etymology of the old law terms and legal formulas. Before the Augustan age there were glossaries or special dictionaries, particularly of terms pertaining to law, such as that of Elius Gallus on the origin and meaning of terms of jurisprudence; the Glossarium of Varro; the work of Quintus Cornificius, famous among the ancients as a curious and learned treatise on etymology, and written about 44 B. C., and often quoted by Festus, and in which, for the sake of illustration, Roman antiquities and the Greek language are frequently quoted. Among other glossographers of this and the succeeding age† Varro,

Quarterly Review xxii, p. 207.

Some of the most noted were L. Cincius, De Verbis Prisris, fragments of which were preserved by Festus; Veranius Flaccus, De Verbis Pontificalibus, and Priscorum Verborum Liber; Antistius Labeo, noted for his skillful elucidation of law terms; Ælius Stilo on the Salian Verses; Santra, De Verborum Antiquitate; Publius Luvinius, De Verbis Sordidis: Modestus, De Vocabulis Rei Militaris.

De Lingua Latina, and Verrius Flaccus, De Verborum Significatione, demand special notice, as their works embodied most of the results gained in the study of language up to their time, and so represent an early stage in Latin lexicography. Of Varro's most famous work, De Lingua Latina, only six books of the original twenty-four are extant, from the fourth to the ninth inclusive, and these in a mutilated form. The first three books are taken up with a defense of the study of etymology; the fourth and fifth with etymology itself; the sixth with poetic terms and common terms used metaphorically, and the rest of the work chiefly with grammar and syntax. We have in Varro mainly the two lexical elements, etymology and definition; which last, though now the chief element of lexicography, receives but a meager treatment; while the first, a minor element, is amply discussed. The etymologies are often fanciful or absurd, showing an ignorance of the principles of etymology; a casual similarity of form was enough of itself to ally one word with another. The arrangement of the words was not the simple and natural alphabetic one, but a complicated classification of subjects; first of places and things in places, and secondly of time and things done in time, with their subordinate groups relating severally to heaven, earth, sea, air, gods, men, clothing, months, days, thoughts, deeds, and the like. The work of Verrius, the freedman, was superior to that of Varro, and much more like a modern dictionary. Verrius himself was a famous rhetorician, and the head of a celebrated school of grammarians in the reign of Augustus, of two of whose grandsons he was tutor. His chief work, the lexicon referred to above, was probably quite large, as the abridgment, which Festus made of the work, consisted of twenty books, each book generally comprising a letter, under which the words came usually in alphabetical order. This work was valuable not only for its interpretations and etymologies, but also for its historical notices and antiquarian details. The work of Verrius is lost, but the epitome of Festus is, in part, still extant. Among the grammarians of the first and second centuries, A. D., were several lexicographical writers of some note.*

Nor were the synonymes of the language neglected. Cato is named as the first Roman writer who drew distinctions between synonymous words; also Rhemnius Palaemon, one of the most cel

Gavius Bessus, contemporary of Trajan and author of De Origine Verborum ; Suetonius Tranquillus, the secretary (magister epistolarum) of Hadrian; Valerius Probus, De Litteris Antiquis. About A. D. 500, F. Planciades Fulgentius wrote two philological works, Expositio Sermonum Antiquorum and De Expositione Virgiliana Continentiæ,

ebrated grammarians and teachers of his day, about A. D. 50, wrote De Differentiis Sermonum; Cornelius Fronto, De Differentis Vocabulorum, fragments of which are extant; Nonius Marcellus, Compendiosa Doctrina de Proprietate Sermonum, wherein distinctions are drawn between such words as augurium and auspicium, urbs and civitas. This was also valuable for its abundant quotations from previous authors. Before A. D. 476 Agrotius wrote De Orthographia, Proprietate et Differentia Sermonis, generally reckoned as a supplement to a similar philological work by Flavius Caper: A very useful work in its bearing upon the language, antiquities, and history of the Romans, was the epitome of Verrius, made probably in the third century, by Sextus Pomponius (Pompeius) Festus, whom we have already named. This epitome omitted the obsolete words found in Verrius, and yet added many examples of old words. Such, however, was its extensive use that it caused the partial neglect and subsequent loss of the original. In the eighth century Paulus Diaconus (Paul Winifred) made an abridgment of Festus, whose work it rapidly supplanted, as his had that of Verrius. In the beginning of the sixteenth century an incomplete copy of Festus, beginning with the letter M, was discovered, and by Aldus Manutius united with a copy of Paul into one work, which was printed in 1513. Subsequently other union editions were published, and from a copy before us, published in 1584, in Paris, we judge the abridgment of Paul to have been about one third the size of the original.

Of great value to lexicography in particular, and to literature in general, were the Origines sive Etymologia, in twenty books, of Isidore of Seville (Isidorus Hispalensis), who flourished about A. D. COO, and was reputed to be the most learned man of his age. These were mainly compilations, and valuable as showing the progress of lexicography and other branches of learning at the beginning of the seventh century. They form a sort of encyclopedia, were much consulted in the middle ages, and are even now of eminent service, not only in explaining the meaning of terms, but also in matters of literary antiquity, embracing as they do words pertaining to philosophy, theology, arithmetic, music, astronomy, jurisprudence, philology, logic, rhetoric, etc. The last ten books are mainly devoted to etymology, which is often fanciful and sometimes absurd. Thus gladius, sword, is derived from gula, throat, inasmuch as the sword was sometimes used to cut the throat. Death closed his life before he had completed this work, which was finished for him by Braulio, bishop of Saragossa. He wrote also a work on synonyms, entitled Differentiarum sive de Proprietate Sermonum, two books. His

treatment of synonyms is brief but clear; thus: "Inter undam et aquam unda semper in motu est, aqua vero stativa." Also, "Inter leges et jura: jus dicitur, lex scribitur. Unde et Virgilius; jura dabat legesque viris. Item leges humanæ jura divina sunt." We have also Latin glossaries of his, which have been formed into a Liber Glossarum. For many centuries the works of Verrius, Festus, Isidore, and others, had done good service in the advancement of learning, yet as they were deficient, as dictionaries, in matter, and method, and scope, and were unsuitable for the intellectual wants of the advancing ages, the restless spirit of man, striving toward perfection, summoned other laborers into this inviting field of patient study.

Passing into the middle ages we meet with the glossographer, Aelfric, an Englishman, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 994, and was author of a Glossarium Latino-Saxonicum. This was afterward published at Oxford, together with a SaxonicoLatino-Anglicum, written by one Somner. To this Aelfric we are indebted for much of the Anglo-Saxon literature that has come down to us. Papias, a noted grammarian, born in Lombardy in the eleventh century, was the author of the Catholicum Lexicon, later styled Vocabularium Elementarium. This was printed in Milan, in 1476, and also passed through several editions in Venice, the last one in 1496. Papias was followed by De Garlandia, an Englishman, who wrote, besides special dictionaries, Synonyma et Equivoca; and by Hugutio (Uguccio) of Pisa, whose Latin dictionary in manuscript form was to be found in many libraries. A better work than either of these was that of John Balbus, born in the thirteenth century in Janua, a town of Upper Italy, and hence surnamed De Ginoa, De Janua, or Januensis. His dictionary, under the usual title of Catholicon, consisted of a Latin grammar and dictionary, both copious and excellent for that age. Its full title, as printed in 1460, by Faust, was Summa Grammaticalis valde Notabilis quæ Catholicon nominatur. It was one of the earliest of printed books, and in spite of its defects passed through many editions in Lyons, Venice, and Paris. Balbus made a large use of the works of Hugutio and Papias, as Hugutio himself had of the works of Papias. Several indifferent abridgments of the Catholicon appeared near the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Two centuries after Balbus we meet with John Reuchlin, who was born in Pforzheim, in Suabia, in 1454. He was the preceptor of Melancthon, was an eminent Hebraist, author of the first Hebrew grammar and lexicon for the use of Christians, and in his day the equal of the literati of Italy in the style of his scholarship, and their