all such Welshmen as will speedily learn the English tongue. London, 1547." "A little Treatise of the English pronunciation of the Letters. London, 1547." "From this Dictionary and Treatise", adds Wood, "Dr. John Davies obtained many materials when he was making his Dictionarium Britannico-Latinum.” "A plain and familiar Introduction, teaching how to pronounce the letters in the British Tongue, now commonly called Welsh. London, 1567." Battery of the Pope's Bottereux, commonly called 'The High Altar'. London, 1550." Without mentioning Salesbury's Translation of the New Testament, and with a passing glance only at his Laws of Howel Dda, Wood thus concludes his brief biographical notice : "He was living in the House of Humphrey Toy, a Bookseller in St. Paul's Church Yard in London, in 1567, in the rinth and tenth year of Elizabeth, being then esteemed a Person to be much meriting of the Church and British Tongue; but when he died, I find not." Soon after this date William Salesbury retired to his estate in Wales, where he again devoted himself to Cymric literature. Salesbury was an extraordinary linguist for his time. He is said to have been conversant with at least ten languages. In addition to the testimony of Sir John Wynn, we learn from the remarks that preface the 'Rhetoric', and to which Henry Perry has strangely appended his name, that he knew Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as English and Welsh. He was thus fitted both by talents and attainments for a lexicographer. And it is in this character that we would now introduce him. Compilers of dictionaries have generally been assisted by vocabularies or other elementary works already in existence. Le Gonidec had several at hand, in addition to one or two dictionaries, when he began his great Armorican lexicon. The Highland Society was similarly circumstanced, when it brought out its compendious Gaelic work. It was the same with the Irish dictionaries: their writers built them up of materials collected by other hands. Canon Williams, too, in the construction of his Cornish lexicon, derived assistance from previous efforts, and especially from those of Tonkin. But William Salesbury had nothing of the kind. He was the pioneer of the little band of philologists that have elucidated our rich old Cymric tongue. Without help, without material, save the spoken language and the few MSS. within his reach, he constructed a valuable and, taking all the circumstances into consideration, a marvellous work; as useful to the men of his day, as it is interesting and useful to the student of these later centuries. While other builders have had their material at hand, Salesbury had to traverse the streets and lanes, the highways and hedges for most of his. Had there been a few printed books, his labours would have been considerably lessened; but there were none. And as for MSS. in the reign of the eighth Harry-where were they to be found? They were both rare and difficult of access. I have spoken of Salesbury's work as a building. With much more justice I might have termed it a creation. Salesbury's compilation, with all its defects, is a reliable work. His idea of a dictionary, it is true, is different from that of William Owen Pughe's. The latter is theoretical. Salesbury, on the contrary, is always practical. The work of the latter is a faithful record of the language of his day, and with all its errors and imperfections. From Dr. Owen Pughe we glean how the Welsh should be spoken; but from William Salesbury how it actually fell from the lips of the men of his time. And we are led to the conclusion, that the spoken language of the sixteenth century differed but little from that of the present day-certainly, far less than the English of the different centuries. English words in a Welsh form, which are altogether discarded by Owen Pughe, constantly appear in Salesbury's work. They were in common use, and he consequently records them. We have, for instance: These are but a few of the number given in the Dictionary; but they suffice for the purpose of illustration. One of the difficulties attendant upon a first compilation would be the different form of the same word. There would be the variation of dialect, as well as that between classic and spoken Welsh. We give the following instances: |