WORDS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1002, 17 December 1910, Page 6

WORDS.

SIR JAMES MURRAY AMD HIS DICTIONARY. ', At the London Institution Sir James ■ Murray lectured recently on the pre-' paration of the still unfinished Oxford »» Dictionary. He said that in' . /• ns-had.the offer from an English and American firm of publishers to .edit the dictionary, and forthwith ma-., tenals for it began:to pour in upon him ' from all quarters of the British 'Isles.: ■ and the seas. Quotations .to' ; meanings.of words, numbering ' millions and weighing tons- were sent i° • i™ i- '" uo ' l -the accumulated material of twenty-live "years collecting had been sent .by the numerous voluntary sub-editors to the. late Dr. Furnivall's house, where they' were stored in ham- :■ l? or .?r/! nt J &cks. further" "* materials he himself had to make journeys to distant country houses and par- . sonages, where he found in" some, cases that. the 'original collectors had .died and . that "their unsympathetic suoces- " sors had relegated bundles of precious quotations to the stables. Then he was confronted by the problem where he ' could place the weight in tons of the' ■ three. million quotations he had collected. It stored in his house at Mill Hill they would, have filled it from top to bottom. The notion of leasing an adjoining cottage, for. them had-to be abandoned for fear of firo. Eventually ho had an iron room erected in his garden.

:> thf. Scriptorium at Oxford were pigeon-holes, each of which held 600U quotations, and the total collection numbered fivo_ million. If' posterity should want a dictionary of 100 volumes th« materials were ready in that iron-store-house. If the live million quotations ' were laid end to end they would stretch 550 miles—from London into Scotland —and the writing if extended would reach from England to the Great Wall of China. .If a man started reading these quotations, one quotation a minute during an eight hours dav, he would talse thirty years to finish" them. A ' lexicographer • who desired-to bo accur- ■' ate, the lecturer observed, had to be » universal inquirer. He illustrated th» nature of these investigations and verifications by somo typical examples. To ■ the Direotor of Kew Gardens he had to write for the best record of ajj.-ex-otic plant; to a Jesuit Father on a ■ point of divinity; to a Newcastle boat builder regarding-the ..keels on tlrb Tyne; to the India Office about a word mentioned in a letter of the yar 1620; to Yarmouth for a full description of a bloater; to Lord Tennyson about the • meaning which he attached to the word , "balm-cricket,'' which he used in his lines: "The balm-crieket enrols clear . . In the green that folds thy grave." . Glancing 'at other dictionaries, Sir James remarked that Dr. Johnson was largely responsible for the bad spelling of the word "dispatch." Although the mistake never occurred -in his -letters, ' and for .225 years the word had beei} written correctly, it appeared in his dictionary as "despatch." Until 1820, however, the wrong spelling did n'oiTuecorns general! Then people began'to . look upon Jonson's work as a standard, and Government Departments ; and various newspapers" changed the proper : spelling to "despatch.""