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But then, everything on board the Elsinore is superlative. I find myself continually combing my vocabulary in quest of just and adequate words. Yet am I aware of failure. For example, all the words of all the dictionaries would fail to approximate the exceeding terribleness of Mulligan Jacobs. But to return to the chickens.
There are a few which the minister uses over and over again; his dictionaries, commentaries, and cyclopedia, if he has one. There are a few treaties that are worth reading and re-reading; but they are exceptional. Generally the student gets the gist of a book in one reading, as a squirrel the kernel of a nut at one crack. What remains on his shelves thereafter is only a shell.
"Exactly," replied Barbara. "The most expressive words are fricassees, heads and tails dished up together. Can't you see the philology of it? 'Squint' and 'peek. Worcester can't put down everything. He leaves something to human ingenuity. The language isn't all made, or used, yet!" Barbara had a way of putting heads and tails together, in defiance in aid, as she maintained of the dictionaries.
For forty years after its first publication editions of Bailey followed each other as rapidly as ever; numerous new dictionaries of the size and character of Bailey, often largely indebted to Johnson's definitions, appeared. But the only new feature introduced into lexicography between 1755 and the end of the century was the indication of the Orthoepy or Pronunciation.
I saw in front a Bible and a Concordance, Shakespeare and Mrs. Cowden Clarke's book, and other classical works and books of grave aspect. I contrived to give it a turn, and on the side next the wall I got a glimpse of Barnum's Rhyming Dictionary, and several Dictionaries of Quotations and cheap compends of knowledge.
His life is given by Plutarch under the name Fabius, and he is remembered as the originator of the policy of delay in war, as our dictionaries tell us, because his plan was to worry his enemy, rather than risk a pitched battle with him. On this account the Romans called him Cunctator, which meant delayer, or one who is slow though safe, not rash.
Uraniphilous, 5! Glossiphilous, 8!! and so on. Meant for a linguist. Invaluable information. Will invest in grammars and dictionaries immediately. I have nothing against the grand total of my phrenological endowments. I never set great store by my head, and did not think Messrs.
We have rhyming dictionaries, let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious, rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel.
As to the dictionaries of natural science and Polynesian idioms, both were English; but they neither bore the name of the publisher nor the date of publication. The same with the Bible printed in English, in quarto, remarkable from a typographic point of view, and which appeared to have been often used.
The former, after a few months, are found gabbling away with ease; the latter, after fifteen or twenty years, can hardly, for the most part, unless when strapped up tight in their grammars and dictionaries, bring out a bit of Latin, and that not without hesitation and stammering." But all this might be remedied.
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