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 16 historians to call the 'Black Death'), been introduced into the grammar schools in the translation of Latin exercises, which boys formerly rendered into French. And under these new conditions lexicographical activity at once bursts forth with vigour. Six important vocabularies of the fifteenth century are printed by Wright-Wülcker, most of them arranged, like the Old English one of Ælfric, under subject-headings; but one large one, extending to 2,500 words, entirely alphabetical. About the middle of the century, also, was compiled the famous Medulla Grammatices, designated, with some propriety, 'the first Latin-English Dictionary,' the popularity of which is shown by the many manuscript copies that still survive; while it formed the basis of the Ortus (i.e. Hortus) Vocabulorum or first printed Latin-English Dictionary, which issued from the press of Wynkyn de Worde in 1500, and in many subsequent editions down to 1533, as well as in an edition by Pynson in 1509.

But all the glossaries and vocabularies as yet mentioned were Latin-English; their primary object was not English, but the elucidation of Latin. A momentous advance was made about 1440, when Brother Galfridus Grammaticus—Geoffrey the Grammarian—a Dominican friar of Lynn Episcopi in Norfolk, produced the English-Latin vocabulary, to which he gave the name of Promptuarium or Promptorium Parvulorum, the Children's Store-room or Repository.

The Promptorium, the name of which has now