Page:King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care (2).djvu/523

vi the Introduction a short sketch of the characteristics of Alfredian English as distinguished from those of the later period. The illustrations are drawn chiefly from the present work, but are supported throughout by citations from other MSS. of the period, especially the Parker Chronicle. It is to be hoped that the results of these investigations will help to dissipate the wide-spread delusion that Old English has been thoroughly worked up, and that nothing remains for us but to accept blindly the theories of Rask and Grimm.

From a lexicographical point of view also this work is of high importance: there is not another prose text in the language that offers so many rare words, many of which seem to occur nowhere else. Most of these words, indeed, have found their way into our dictionaries, although often in a corrupt form, or with inaccurate renderings, but others are here brought to light for the first time. Their lexicographical history is so interesting in its bearings on the past and present state of Old English philology in this country, that a brief sketch of the leading facts may not be unacceptable.

When the study of Old English was first revived by Archbishop Parker, the want of a dictionary was naturally soon felt, which want was first supplied by Somner's 'Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum,' Oxon., 1659, a mere glossary, without references. Meanwhile, Franciscus Junius was engaged in compiling a far more elaborate work, with copious citations from the MSS. The work was never published: it was for a long time preserved in loose sheets among the other Junius MSS. in the Bodleian, and is now bound, forming two huge volumes.

Among the MSS. used by Junius, the Pastoral, of which he possessed a transcript of his own, seems to have been indexed with especial care: but few words are omitted, and still fewer are wrongly explained.

Now it is not, perhaps, generally known that all our '