Fathers held respecting the actual present exercise of diabolical agency in their own day, and in some cases, as they believed, under their own eyes. Any one may see the evidence of this by referring to an easily accessible book, Conyers Middleton on the Miraculous Powers, in which it is shown, by the citation of their words, that the Fathers held the belief in Satan in the most gross and superstitious form. They make state ments on the subject which are incredible, and could only proceed from ignorant and inconsiderate men. As a matter of course the Greek Fathers read the Lord's Prayer by the lurid light of such ideas.

Naturally, therefore, to such men the words under notice could mean nothing else but the evil one;" and accordingly a long series of passages may be drawn from their writings, in which they appear to assent to and accept this interpretation of the words. Of course, as Greek was their native tongue, it must not be said that the words cannot mean what these writers tell us they mean. But they were not infallible. They were very much the contrary; and the probability is, when all the considerations bearing upon the subject are duly weighed, that the Fathers were wrong, and that they were simply misled to interpret the words as they did by the superstition of their times, the bondage of which weighed so heavily upon themselves. At the same time it is not to be questioned that the belief in Satan was held by the Teacher'' himself; but it is not necessary to hold that he embodied it in this passage of his teachings. It would then have been perfectly reasonable out of regard to the probabilities of the case, to put "the evil one" into the margin, in the usual way, for the use of such as prefer it; but it does seem to be unpardonable to lower the character of this otherwise beautiful and comprehensive prayer by introducing into it for modern use so gross and unspiritual an idea-to do this, too, without absolute certainty that it is correct. And that such certainty did not exist, even in the minds of the revisers themselves, is shown by the fact of the alternative rendering which they have placed in their margin.

Another passage in the same neighbor

hood calls for a few remarks-remarks again not of approval but of disapproval

and protest. Matt. 5 22, shall be in danger of the hell of fire"-and so in two other instances. In the Authorized Version, "hell" is the rendering of two different words, Gehenna and Hades. The latter of these is to be no longer so expressed. Being a proper name, it is left by the revisers untranslated; and so the revised text will be enriched by a new word-new at least to the English Bible-the word Hades, which will be found to occur eleven times. This treatment of the word, in as much as it is a proper name, is correct; but then Gehenna is a proper name also! Why, therefore, has not this been retained, but rendered by the ugly word "hell?" And "hell of fire" seems especially objectionable, for two reasons: first, only one kind of hell is known to the New Testament, while this phrase suggests other hells of a different nature, thus indirectly and quite needlessly importing into the Christian books the conception, of certain Pagan mythologies, as to hells of a variety of kinds;-secondly, the added words "of fire" (or 66 of the fire"), are they more than a simple Hebraism? If not, the meaning of the expression Gehenna of fire, is most probably "the burning Gehenna," and no more. The reader may see a similar form in Luke 18:6, judge of unrighteousness, properly Englished by "unrighteous judge.

Ge

The probability of this interpretation arises from the nature of the case. henna was the name of a valley near Jerusalem. The word by its Hebrew etymology means "valley of Hinnom," an ancient name found in the Old Testament (2 Kings 23 : 10; 2 Chron. 28:3). In former times it had been the scene of idolatrous rites and of human sacrifices to the god Moloch. Hence to the later Jews it was a place of abomination, and to mark its character it was defiled by the various refuse of the city there thrown and kept burning that it might be consumed. A veritable place of fire, deserving of its name and reputation! where amidst corrupting matters worms too might live, until the all-consuming element swallowed them up. Thus there was here literally a Tuρ diviov, an age-enduring fire, an

unquenchable fire"-a place "where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." (Mark 9: 43, 48).

It is easy to understand that, Gehenna being such a place as this, it would become the representative, in popular speech, of the place of punishment reserved for the wicked and the unbelieving, who were doomed to destruction at the final judgment on the coming of the Messiah. The ungodly should be cast into the burning Gehenna and consumed: it does not appear that they were to be kept alive, burning for ever, this being a later addition to the ancient conception. The ideas associated with the medieval hell-such as may be seen painted on the wall of the Campo Santo at Pisa-are unknown to the Gospels, and have only been added to the original name in its modern form by the lively imaginations of speculative theologians. In other words, the representation of "Gehenna" by "hell" is clearly unjustifiable, because this terrible word now suggests ideas of horror and misery which have no foundation in New Testament usage, when due regard is paid to the origin and history of the word Gehenna. It might have been expected that a body of revisers such as the Westminster Company would have been able to raise themselves above the popular conceptions of our day, and would have given us a rendering of the words in question which was fairly based not upon 'the long-descended notions of the darkest ages of medieval

superstition, but upon the just historical considerations which are applicable to the subject. Those who expected so much as this, it is a pity to think, will be disappointed; and so it is reserved for a future revision, if ever such a thing shall come to pass, to do justice to words and thoughts which, in connection with this subject, have been so long misrepresented-to the sore discredit, with many thoughtful minds, of the Christian Gospel.

But here, leaving many interesting passages, changed or unchanged, without comment, I must bring this paper to a close. Whatever the imperfections of the revised version may be, still, it must be admitted, the revision is a good work accomplished. It will at least awaken thought and stimulate inquiry, in quarters in which these have been too apt to slumber. It breaks the spell which the old Authorized had thrown over the religious world, or at least the English Protestant part of it. People will no longer look upon the English Bible, chapter headings and italics included, as if it had been dropped from heaven just as it is; and perhaps it will be more easy than it was to get a truth of modern science into the heads of ordinary religious people, even in the face of apparent difficulty arising on the side of the Bible. This will be a gain to the cause of truth and reason which all truthful and reasonable men will be glad to see. The Nineteenth Century.

had to be dispersed. Each stood solitary then, or nearly solitary, separated from the schools whence scholarly help could be drawn. Yet each stood facing a crowd grouped round him to be taught; and each, at some word, at some clause, at some peroration, at some pregnant cornerstone of an argument he was burning to launch straight home, found the text of his parchment a pit, or a stumbling-block, hindering him. The treasured MS. was of his own copying, nearly for a certainty. That did not

boriously and delicately margined, and stitched and covered and clasped into the form of a goodly book-he had to expound its learned method so that it should touch the simple; or, bewildering him sadly, he had to turn its words from the Greek, from the Hebrew, from any master-tongue, into the language, even the dialect, familiar to his audience -a language often harshly unfamiliar to himself and the right way to do this would again and again refuse to come to him, and his message failed. There was the pity of it: there was the grief. It could not be allowed to abide. And at last there occurred to him the remedy. In his quiet hours, his flock away, he would pore over his MS. afresh. It might be Missal, it might be Commentary, Treatise, Diatribe, Epic Poem, Homily, Holy Writ-the same plan would be efficacious for each one. After beating out the meaning of the crabbed, the Oriental, characters-of the painstaking, level, faultless Gothic letter-he would write this meaning, this exposition, this gloss, above each word, each phrasing, that had given him trouble; and then, thenceforth, and for ever, such gloss would be there to see and to use, and every difficulty would have been made, magically, to disappear. Good. The goodness must be manifest at once. Only there is a fact remaining, requiring acute indication. At the very first word the very first of these conscientious oldworld scholars thus glossed or explained, the seed was sown of the new-world dictionaries; and there has been no stop to the growth of this seed till the tree from it has spread its thick and wide branches as far as they have spread, and are still spreading, in this very to-day. Perhaps this may seem remote? Short work will be enough to show how it was done. Pupils, or call them young or less-instructed associates, of a master, had again, and after a lapse of time in greater numbers, to be dispersed. After the lapse of time, also, MSS. were ordered to be executed for royal and other wealthy readers, too much engrossed by state and duties to be able to keep to the set places and hours of a class. As for the young associates, they would have read from their master's glossed MSS. during their pupilage, had they had to take their duties while they were absent,

while they were ill. while they were ill. As for the newlyfinished MSS., it would have been destruction to their cherished neatness, to their skilled beauty, to have defaced them with glosses here and there, as glosses were, in patches, and generally, for greater conspicuousness, written in red letters. Glossed words were written in a list apart, then; becoming, in this way, companion to the students, enlightenment to the MS., and enlightenment almost as handy as if it had been delivered from the tongue. Particular exposition of a particular master came to be especially demanded, too; from veneration, for comparison, to settle a dispute, for the mere admiration and interest of seeing what another man had done. Such exposition was, perforce, on a separate list. Such expositions, moreover

coming as they did, one perhaps from a scholar at Rhegium, one from Nysa, one from Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople, Rhodes-could be readily perceived to possess color from the temperament, from the circumstances, of the writer; and it followed, as a simple consequence, that two or more should be set out, methodically, side by side. Here, then, was the form of a dictionary; the germ of it, its manner. Here a word stood, with a series of interpretations to it; the whole to be read at one consulting, and giving employment to the critical faculty of rejection or approval. For, this duplication, this triplication, this multiplication, as it grew to be, had its own excellent relish, and the very relish suggested something more. There would have been the word exilis, put it. One teacher would recommend it to be rendered thin (of course, the equivalent to these shades of thought, according to the tongue being used and elucidated); another teacher, of wider thought, would expound it mean; another, living amid bleak rocks, perhaps, and these helping his asceticism, would set down barren; another, applying the thinness and tenuity to some musical sounds remaining in his memory, would write it shrill, treble. To say this, is but to say how language itself accumulated, and had expansion. Yet it suggests the mode. It points out how, when each word had such various glosses put to it, richness could not fail to arise; and diversity, and discrimination, with

greater or less delicacy of expression; and how glosses being born-or, christen them with that longer name of glossaries---were never likely to be let to die. There has to be recollection, however, that, as these glossaries were limited to gleanings from one мs., or to gleanings from various copies of that same one MS., according to what, of fresh interpretation, each separate owner had glossed, so they were limited to explaining one author; or to explaining such limited portion of one author as one Ms. contained. Thus one glossary would elucidate a Gospel; one, a set of Epistles; one, a Prophet; one, Virgil, Horace, Homer, Euripides. The Epinal Gloss is an existing example, luckily for the literary world, of such an accumulation. In Ms. still, it is still, by the religious treasuring it has had at Epinal, precisely as it was at its compilation 1200 years ago (in the course now, however, of being printed here, lent by the French Government for that purpose); and it is testimony, teeming with interest, of how far dictionary-life, in its day, had advanced. Progressing still, there was the Latin Glossary' of Varo, dedicated to his contemporary Cicero. There was the Lexicon" of Apollonius the Sophist, in the first century, elucidating the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey. There was the "Onomasticon" of Pollux; Pollux, instructor to the Emperor Commodus, having produced this, a Greek Vocabulary, expressly for his imperial pupil's use. There was the Lexicon" of Harpocration, in the fourth century, relating only to the Ten Orators of Greece. There was the valuable work of Hesychius of Alexandria. There was the "Glossary" of Photius, written in the ninth century: all of these having been printed at Venice and kindred places, after centuries of chrysalis life in Ms., almost as soon as printing was available; and this particular Photian "Glossary" having been reedited here by Porson, and even called for, after Porson's death, later still, viz. in 1822. There was the Lexicon" of Suidas, collected by him in the tenth century, and printed at Milan in 1499; remarkable for the plan, first used in it, of giving extracts from the poets and historians it explained to explain them better, and for thus widening con

siderably the already widening field of the lexicographical art. There was the dictionary, in the thirteenth century, of John Balbus, called John of Genoa; a Latin work extending to 700 pages folio, that has further notability from having been the first in type, Gutenberg himself having printed it at Mayence, in 1460. There was the dictionary, printed at Vicenza in 1483, of Johannes Crestonus, in Greek and Latin; both, also, a development. There was the Latin dictionary of Calepino, first printed at Reggio in 1502, and enjoying, like the Greek dictionary of Photius, continued re-editing down to the present century. But the expansion of the gloss-seed, as shown in all these instances, having reached the point at which there was recognition of the fact that the search for words was a distinct branch of letters, worthy of a special hand possessing special scholarly attainments, the period of English dictionaries has been touched, and the subject must have treatment assuming different proportions.

It will have been understood-up to this point, of course that the aim of all the early word-works that have been enumerated was merely to give explanations of rare words, difficult words words known, shortly, as shortly, as “hard. This continued. English lexicographers at this outset of their career, and for centuries, did not go beyond. They grew very pleasant, they were quaint, they were concentrated, they were rambling, delightful, either way; and, they shall be their own exemplification.

The "Promptorium Parvulorum" heads the list; the "Little Expeditor," or the "Little Discloser, as it might (very freely) be translated. Alas, that it should be so small! That "hard" words were so scant then, it has such few pages that they can be run through in a moderate reading. Its style is to go from A to Z alphabetically, but to have its nouns in one list, its verbs in another; to give nothing but these nouns and verbs; and, being written in English first to help English students to Latin, it has no complementary half for those who, having a Latin word, want to turn it into English. "Gredynesse of mete, it says, Aviditas. Gredynesse in askynge, Procacitas. Fadyr and modyr

yn one worde, Parens. False and deceyvable and yvel menynge, Versutis, Versipellis. Golet or Throte, Guttar, Gluma, Gola. Clepyn or Callyn,

Voco. Its date is 1440, about; it was written by a Norfolk man (as the preface tells); Richard Francis, think some; Galfridus Grammaticus, as is conjectured by others; it was first printed in 1499, appeared three or four times again when 1500 was just turned, and has had a careful reprint recently by the Camden Society, under the capa ble editing of Mr. Albert Way. Immediately succeeded, this, by the" Catholicon Anglicum." dated 1483, but never in print till the Early English Text Society was granted the privilege of publishing it a very few years ago; by the “ Medulla Grammatice;" by the Ortus Vocabulorum" based upon it and printed in 1500 (these being Latin); by Palsgrave's "Lesclaircissement de la Langue Francoyse, printed in 1530; by Wyllyam Salesbury's Dictionary in Englysche and Welshe, printed in 1547; there came the English Dictionary proper of Richard Huloet, that first went to the press in 1552. The edition of this by John Higgins, printed a few years later, is a volume that is beautiful even by the standard of to-day. It is folio; generously thick; perfect in its neatness; its double columns are regularly arranged, with the headings B ante A, B ante E (the fair forerunner of the present mode BAB, BAC, etc.) and, intended to give English and Latin and French, it puts the English in black letter, the Latin in Roman, the French in italics; unless, indeed, the French is evidently not in Richard Huloet's knowledge, when Huloet calmly omits it altogether. Here is his manner:

Apple, called Apple John, or Saint John's Apple, or a sweting, or an apple of paradise. Malum, musteum, Melinelum, quod minimum durat celeriter-que mitescit. Pomme de paradis.

Here again :

Pickers, or thieves that go by into chambers, making as though they sought something. Diætarii. Ulpian. Larrons qui montent jusques aux chambres, faisant semblant de cercher quelque chose.

"For the better attayning of the knowledge of words," says this good Richard Huloet, "I went not to the common

66

The "Manipulus Vocabulorum, written by Peter Levens in T570, printed then, by Henrie Bynneman, in seventy-seven leaves quarto, and reprinted, a few years since, under the careful supervision of Mr. H. B. Wheatley, appeals quite as prettily to have its claims considered. Some will say, writes Peter Levens, "that is a superfluous and unnecessarie labour to set forth this Dictionarie, for so muche as Maister Huloet hath sette forthe so worthie a worke of the same kinde already. But his is great and costly, this is little and of light price; his for greter students and them that are richable to have it, this for beginners and them that are pooreable to have no better; his is ful of phrases and sentences fit for them that use oration and oratorie, this is onely stuffed full of words.' And there the words are English first, in Latin after; in double columns; and the English to rhyme, for Scholers as use to write in English Méetre, thus: Bande, Brande, Hande, Lande, Sande, Strande, etc., with the Latin for each at the side. Over the errata at the end Peter Levins writes, "Gentle Reader, amende these fautes escaped ;" and the only wish to the modern reader is that there was more matter to read, even if it enforced the amendment of fautes indeed.

Contemporary with this, was

in

a

Shorte Dictionarie in Latin and English verie profitable for yong Beginners, by J. Withals. It is a charming-looking little book, octavo, only half an inch thick, light and supple as a pocketbook, with its matter in double columns, the English first, and the "catch words" of this still in black letter. Wynkyn de Worde printed it in its early editions, and it was printed again and again by others, down to 1599. Little Dictionarie for Children," says J. Withals, as a running title all along the pages of it; but he gives the puzzled little Elizabethan children no alphabet to

A