Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/144

 138 Reviews and Notes and deofol. For the former we find as last instance from Ps. Srt. 26, 14, Abid dryht 'exspecta Dominum, sustine Dominum. ' For the latter, under section II b, Alle godas ffioda dioful ' omnes dii gentium daemomV from Ps. Srt. 95, 5 is proffered. If we turn to Sweet's edition of the Vespasian Psalter, we learn that dryht is Stevenson's inaccuracy for the MS.'s dryht' '= dry >kten, and dioful for the MS.'s dioful. Further the Supplement helps to per- petuate regrettable blunders by quoting sub ascirpan from Ps. Srt. 63, 4 ascearptun instead of the correct ascerptun from Sweet. I cannot, at present, show that perpetuation of blunders has resulted from the Supplement's persistence in quoting from the antiquated edition of Old English Vocabularies by Thomas Wright 1857 and 1873 rather than from the second edition by Richard Paul Wiilcker, London 1884, but I can testify to the irritation a scholar is subjected to by the Supplement's practice which is utterly at variance with the practice followed by other scholars, notably by those of the New English Dictionary, who have found it expedient to use Wiilcker's edition for the quotation of glosses, although even that edition does not come up to our present requirements of accuracy and fidelity to MS. evidence. And there are cases where the Supplement can just as little help quoting from Wright- Wiilcker as the Dictionary could help in certain instances. 1 So, for example, sub ganra the Supplement has to turn to that edi- tion for its additional quotation. It is credited there to "Wiilck. Gloss. 284, 12." The uninitiated reader will have some difficulty in finding out what this abbreviation means. The designation Wright-Wiilcker Voc. I 284, 12 would have been more exact and in keeping with the practice of other scholars. For a good many words hitherto not recorded or for fur- ther illustrations of words recorded, the Supplement draws largely on the charters, as indeed is meet and proper, these documents being a mine of Old English word material alto- gether too long neglected by lexicographers, though J. Kemble's six volumes of his Codex Diplomaticus were published as early as 1839-1848. On this first publication of the charters the Dictionary no less than the Supplement bases its quotations, though there are occasional quotations from the Cartularium Saxonicum by Walter de Gray Birch, London 1883-1893 and from B. Thorpe's Dip- lomatarium Aevi Saxonici, London 1865 or John Earle's Handbook to the Land Charters and other Saxonic Documents, Oxford 1888. Now, though Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus is a monumental work in its way, "justly celebrated for the greatness of its conception and general effect, " yet, as Mr. Birch points out, it is unfortunately marred by several offences against the present standard of literary work. In the first place, the texts themselves are in a large pro- portion of cases edited incorrectly, and that, in some instances, to a 1 See sub webwyrhta, winbeam, wodewistle, wratyu, uirafystudu, wrecan.