Page:Evolution of English Lexicography.djvu/22

 Rh first half of the sixteenth century have been unmeaning, for all dictionaries were not yet alphabetical. There is indeed no other connexion between a dictionary and alphabetical order, than that of a balance of convenience. Experience has shown that though an alphabetical order makes the matter of a dictionary very disjointed, scattering the terminology of a particular art, science, or subject, all over the book, and even when related words come together, often putting the unimportant derivative in front of the important primitive word, it is yet that by which a word or heading can be found, with least trouble and exercise of thought. But this experience has been only gradually acquired; even now the native dictionaries of some Oriental languages are often not in alphabetical order; in such a language as Chinese, indeed, there is no alphabetical order in which to place the words, and they follow each other in the dictionary in a purely arbitrary and conventional fashion. In English, as we have seen, many of the vocabularies from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, were arranged under class-headings according to subject; and, although Sir Thomas Elyot's Dictionary was actually in alphabetical order, that of J. Withals, published in 1554, under the title 'A short dictionarie for young beginners,' and with the colophon 'Thus endeth this Dictionary very useful for Children, compiled by J. Withals,' reverts to the older arrangement of subject-classes, as Names of things in the Æther or skie, the xii Signes, the vii Planets, Tymes, Seasons, Other times in the yere, the daies of the weeke, the Ayre, the viij windes, the