Of this work Martin Marprelate says in his
_Epistle_ (Arber, p. 42), 'His Lordship of Winchester is a great
Clarke, for he hath translated his Dictionarie, called Cooper's
Dictionarie, verbatim out of Robert Stephanus his _Thesaurus_, and
ill-favoured too, they say!' This was, however, the criticism of an
adversary; Cooper had added to Stephens's work many accessions from
his editions of Sir Thomas Elyot, and other sources; his _Thesaurus_
was the basis of later Latin-English dictionaries, and traces of it
may still be discovered in the Latin-English dictionaries of to-day.
Of printed English-Latin works, after the _Promptorium_, one of the
earliest was the _Vulgaria_ of William Herman, Headmaster and Provost
of Eton, printed by Pynson in 1519. This is a _Dictionarium_ or _liber
dictionarius_ in the older sense, for it consists of short _dictiones_
or sayings, maxims, and remarks, arranged under subject-headings, such
as _De Pietate_, _De Impietate_, _De corporis dotibus_, _De
Valetudinis cura_, _De Hortensibus_, _De Bellicis_, and finally a
heading _Promiscua_. It may therefore be conceived that it is not easy
to find any particular _dictio_. Horman was originally a Cambridge
man; but, according to Wood, he was elected a Fellow of New College,
Oxford, in 1477, the very year in which Caxton printed his first book
in England, and in this connexion it is interesting to find among the
illustrative sentences in the _Vulgaria_, this reference to the new
art (sign.
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