[16] Be the speed what it may, however, there is
the consideration that the work thus done is done once for all; the
structure now reared will have to be added to, continued, and extended
with time, but it will remain, it is believed, the great body of fact
on which all future work will be built. It is never possible to
forecast the needs and notions of those who shall come after us; but
with our present knowledge it is not easy to conceive what new feature
can now be added to English Lexicography. At any rate, it can be
maintained that in the Oxford Dictionary, permeated as it is through
and through with the scientific method of the century, Lexicography
has for the present reached its supreme development.
In the course of this lecture, it has been needful to give so many
details as to individual works, that my audience may at times have
failed 'to see the wood for the trees,' and may have lost the clue of
the lexicographical evolution. Let me then in conclusion recapitulate
the stages which have been already indicated. These are: the glossing
of difficult words in Latin manuscripts by easier Latin, and at length
by English words; the collection of the English glosses into
Glossaries, and the elaboration of Latin-English Vocabularies; the
later formation of English-Latin Vocabularies; the production of
Dictionaries of English and another modern language; the compilation
of Glossaries and Dictionaries of 'hard' English words; the extension
of these by Bailey, for etymological purposes, to include words in
general; the idea of a Standard Dictionary, and its realization by Dr.
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