A thoroughly good
etymological dictionary of English is yet to seek; and even if we
should ever get one, it will be for students, and not for the laity.
Nor is it the primary object of a common dictionary to trace the
history of the language. Of great interest and importance to scholars,
it is of comparatively little to Smith and Brown and their children at
the public school. It is a work apart, which we hope to see
accomplished by the London Philological Society in a manner worthy of
comparison with what has been partly done for German by the brothers
Grimm,--alas that the illustrious duality should have been broken by
death! A lexicon of that kind should be an index to all the more
eminent books in the language; but we do not hold this to be the office
of a dictionary for daily reference. A dictionary that should embrace
every unusual word, every new compound, every metaphorical turn of
meaning, to be found in our great writers, would be a compendium of the
genius of our authors rather than of our language; and a lexicographer
who rakes the books of second and third-rate men for out-of-the-way
phrases is doing us no favor. A dictionary is not a drag-net to bring
up for us the broken pots and dead kittens, the sewerage of speech, as
well as its living fishes.
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