y part I confesse, hadst not thou writ,
I had not beene acquainted with more wit
Than our old English taught; but now I can
Be proud to know I have a Countryman
Hath strugled for a fame, and what is more,
Gain'd it by paths of Art, vntrod before.
The benefit is generall; the crowne
Of praise particular, and thats _thine owne_.
What should I say? thine owne deserts inspire thee,
Twere base to enuie, I must then admire thee.

A friend and louer of thy paines,
IOHN FORD.

And a deeply interesting little book is this diminutive ancestor of
the modern English Dictionary, to describe which adequately would take
far more time than the limits of this lecture afford. It is divided
into three parts: Part I contains the hard words with their
explanation in ordinary language; and instructive it is to see what
words were then considered hard and unknown. Many of them certainly
would be so still: as, for example, _abgregate_, 'to lead out of the
flock'; _acersecomick_, 'one whose hair was never cut';
_adcorporated_, 'married'; _adecastick_, 'one that will do just
howsoever'; _bubulcitate_, 'to cry like a cow-boy'; _collocuplicate_,
'to enrich'--concerning which we wonder who used them, or where
Cockeram found them; but we are surprised to find among these hard
words _abandon_, _abhorre_, _abrupt_, _absurd_, _action_, _activitie_,
and _actresse_, explained as 'a woman doer,' for the stage actress had
not yet appeared. _Blunder_, 'to bestir oneself,' and _Garble_, 'to
clense things from dust,' remind us that the meanings of words are
subject to change. The Second Part contains the ordinary words
'explained' by their hard equivalents, and is intended to teach a
learned style. The plain man or gentlewoman may write a letter in his
or her natural language, and then by turning up the simple words in
the dictionary alter them into their learned equivalents. Thus
'abound' may be altered into _exuperate_, 'too great plenty' into
_uberty_, 'he and I are of one age' into _we are coetaneous_,
'youthful babbling' into _juvenile inaniloquence_--a useful expression
to hurl at an opponent in the Oxford Union.

The last part is the most entertaining of all: it is headed 'The Third
Part, treating of Gods and Goddesses, Men and Women, Boyes and Maides,
Giants and Diuels, Birds and Beasts, Monsters and Serpents, Wells and
Riuers, Herbes, Stones, Trees, Dogges, Fishes, and the like'; it is a
key to the all