thought could be beneficial to him. Amongst others, Mr. George Davenport, a great proficient in the Saxon, sent him many notes and observations. A letter from Somner to Casaubon acknowledges the obligation:-" I return many thanks for these papers of Mr. Davenport, which you were pleased to impart to me. I have more than once perused them, and am so well pleased and instructed by them that I shall improve them to a good degree; in point of correction to some, enlargement and illustration in other parts of my Lexicon, not without acknowledgment of my author."* This work, so anxiously looked for, was published in 1659 in a folio volume. It is a Saxon-Latin-English Dictionary. Many of the notes are also in English. At the end are the LatinSaxon Grammar and Glossary of Ælfric.

Although Somner had from the death of Whelock enjoyed, and did then enjoy, the salary appertaining to the Saxon Lecture founded at Cambridge by Sir Henry Spelman, yet the work was printed at Oxford, for which the most probable reason we can assign is this, that the University of Cambridge had no suitable types, those which had been employed by Whelock in printing Bede's history being too large for a dictionary.† Of the labours of Davenport above mentioned, in the promotion of Saxon literature, we have a specimen in a copy of Somner's Dictionary, which, we are told by White Kennet," was in the possession of Mr. George Davenport, (an absolute master in the Saxon, and a true friend to Somner,) much noted and enlarged by the curious owner, and is now in other hands, much farther improved."‡

In the year 1660, Somner published the "History of Gavel

* Kennet's Life of Somner, prefixed to History of Gavelkind.

† E. R. Mores's Dissertation on Typographical Founders, p. 16. Kennet's Life of Somner. The fate of this volume I am unable to trace; but in Thorpe's Catalogue of fourteen hundred MSS., 1836, Art. 1141, there is a work in some respects answering the description in the text. "Somner's Saxon and Latin Dictionary, Oxford, 1659, folio. A most valuable volume to the Saxon scholar, being interleaved and illustrated with numerous and very copious notes and additions by George Davenport, which, it is presumed, have never been used." Another copy of Somner's Dictionary, with large additions by Dr. Waterland, consisting of from between four to five thousand words, was in the possession of the late Dr. Adam Clarke.

kind," to which is added an appendix of charters and other instruments in Saxon, some of which are accompanied with Latin, and others with interlinear English translations.* Many of his books and papers were accidentally burnt. Amongst others were memoirs of his life, the loss of which is a source of regret. The remainder were purchased by the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, and are, I suppose, still preserved in that library. Amongst his collections, still remaining, are marginal emendations on Fox's Saxon Gospels, and L'Isle's Saxon Monuments, Casaubon's treatise, De Lingua Saxonica, Verstegan's Restitution, &c., and Spelman's Saxon Psalter; the materials used in compiling his Saxon Dictionary, two volumes of transcripts from Saxon MSS., a Collection from the Saxon Annals, very large emendations on Spelman's Concilia, (he having collated the text with MSS., amended the Saxon, and corrected the whole work;) two copies of Lambarde's Archaionomia, full of emendations, &c., together with other works, which have been since used by Saxon scholars, and from which it will be seen how much we are indebted to his labours.

From the period of the publication of the Saxon-English Dictionary, the study of our own language received an impulse which future lexicographers and grammarians began, though slowly, to take advantage of. In the year 1663, an enlarged English Grammar was published by Charles Butler, at Oxford, in which is given a collection of Saxon and English words, and a comparison thus made between the two languages. Wilkins's Essay towards a real Character and a Philosophical Language, followed in 1668. Skinner's Etymologicon Anglicanum, completed and published by Dr. Thomas Henshaw in 1671, still further displays the utility of the Anglo-Saxon tongue in tracing our

own.

In 1689, another attempt was made to improve our knowledge of the origin of the English language in a work entitled, "Gazophylacium Anglicanum, containing the derivation of English words, proper and common, each in an alphabet

• A second edition of the History of Gavelkind was published in 1726, with the addition of his Life by White Kennet; first inserted in Somner's Roman Forts and Ports in Kent. 12mo, 1693.

distinct, proving the Dutch and Saxon to be the prime fountains."

Without mentioning other works of this kind here, it is evident that from the publication of Somner's Dictionary, a new path was opened up to the English philologer, and although a long time elapsed before sound philological principles were brought to bear on the subject, much of the rubbish had been cleared away, and a firm foundation laid, to which many scholars have since added materials, although we still want the superstructure.

The English language also began to receive the attention of continental scholars. The works of the learned were no longer exclusively confined to the Latin. English scholars began to write in their own tongue on subjects of science, and thus afforded materials of the best possible kind for improving and consolidating the language. A check was also placed on the innovations which preceding times had attempted, and the euphuism of the court of Elizabeth, the pedantry of the theologists of the reign of James, and the canting phraseology of the Puritans, equally sunk before the nervous and renovated Saxon.* The laws, which hitherto had been enrolled in the Norman French; the pleadings in our courts (although they had been in English since the time of Edward III.) until now had been translated into the same barbarous language, were for the future ordered to be in English; and the language became, in less than a century, the principal medium of communication, on almost every subject connected with literature and science.

In 1663, Silas Taylor published " A Treatise of Gavelkind,” in which some account of the progress of the Saxon language towards extinction after the Conquest is given, and a few quotations from the Saxon Chronicle. "During the Civil Wars," according to Antony Wood, "he ransacked the library

* To many works, during the period referred to in the text, these remarks will not apply. For instance, in the reign of Elizabeth, the tracts which are known under the name of "Martin Mar-Prelate," display a terseness and vigour of style, and a bitterness of invective, not often equalled in our own times. The curious inquirer into literary history has often occasion to regret their great scarcity.

of the Church of Hereford of the best MSS. therein, and did also garble the MSS. in the library of the Church of Worcester, and the evidences pertaining thereunto, amongst which, as I have heard, he got the original grant of King Edgar, whence the Kings of England derived their right to the sovereignty of the seas. 99* His collections relating to Hereford, out of Domesday Book, &c., with two Saxon records, and an interlinear English translation, are in the British Museum.†

Dr. Thomas Mareschall, or Marshall, has already been mentioned, in connection with Junius, as the author of Observations on two Ancient Versions of the Gothic and AngloSaxon Gospels. Although born and educated in England, he was, at the period of the publication of that work, a minister of the English church at Rotterdam and Dort. The high estimation which he acquired from that work induced the society of Lincoln College, Oxford, to choose him fellow in 1668, and of which he was afterwards elected rector. He subsequently returned to England, and was the instructor of the celebrated Dr. George Hickes and others in the Saxon language. It is stated in Hickes's Thesaurus, [Vol. III. 85,] that Dr. Mareschall had taken the pains to collate a copy of Orosius, made by Junius, with the Lauderdale transcript for the purpose of publication. He made some progress in collecting materials for an Anglo-Saxon grammar, a labour recommended to him by Bishop Fell, which are now in the Bodleian Library; they consist of a few loose sheets, with some forms of declensions.§

In the year 1670, Sheringham published "De Anglorum Gentis Origine Disceptatio," &c., on which work Bishop Nicolson has pronounced a very high eulogium. It contains, however, but few things relative to our subject. The same may be said also of the "Antiquities of Ancient Britain,

* Athenæ Oxonienses, vol. ii. 624. Ed. 1721.

† MS. Harl. 6856.

Nicolson's Hist. Library, 42. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iv. 122, 5. Wood's Athenæ, ii. 782.

§ Grammaticalia quædam Anglo-Saxonica per D. THOMAM MARESCHALLUM, in solutis schedis scripta, et inter codd. ejus MSS. reposita. Wanley's Catalogue, 102. Bosworth's Grammar, Pref. xxv.

derived from the Phoenicians" of Aylett Sammes, published in 1676. At the end he has given the Laws of King Ina in Anglo-Saxon, with an English translation, but by whom done I know not, unless it was Somner. Two years afterwards the scholars of University College printed Sir John Spelman's Life of Alfred, which was translated into Latin by Obadiah Walker; to which several appendixes were added, including, amongst other things, Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Preface to Gregory's Pastoral Care; the Voyages of Ohthere and Wulstan, and other Saxon remains.* A second edition of the Monasticon Anglicanum appeared in 1682. Amongst the "Certain Miscellany Tracts" of Sir Thomas Browne, printed in the folio edition of his works in 1686, there is one "Of Languages, and particularly of the Saxon Tongue," but is not of sufficient interest to require further notice here. The "Seasonable Treatise, proving that King William did not get the imperial Crown of England by the Sword, 1689," contains two or three Saxon charters of the Conqueror that have been printed elsewhere.

The year 1689 also saw the publication of the first AngloSaxon Grammar ever compiled. This was the production of Dr. George Hickes. It is entitled, " Institutiones Grammaticæ Anglo-Saxonicæ et Moso-Gothicæ;" to which was added, "Grammatica Islandica Runolphi Jone;" and "Etymologicon Britannicum," by Edward Bernard. It is dedicated to Archbishop Sancroft. Whilst writing the Preface, disputes ran high in the House of Commons and throughout the kingdom, respecting the original contract, which occasioned him to insert the ancient coronation oath of our Saxon kings. The work was printed at the Sheldon press, with the Junian types. In the same year Wharton, in his " Auctarium Historiæ Dogmaticæ," printed Ælfric's Anglo-Saxon Preface to the Heptateuch, accompanied by the Latin version of Hickes. In the year 1692, Gibson edited an improved text of the Saxon

"In April 1679, Sir Harbottle Grimston, in the Parliament House, took occasion to mention the printing of certain books at the Theater in Oxon as the Notes on King Alfred's Life, wherein were several (as he said) that savoured of Popery." Wood's Athenæ, ii. 933. Ed. 1721.j