Abstract
The first English dictionary of any kind to indicate that particular words are old and should not be used is a sixteenth century rhyming dictionary. Levins’ dictionary may have provided Spenser with some words for use in the Shepheardes Calender.
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Notes to Chapter Four
Henry B. Wheatley (ed.), Manipulus Vocabulorum: A Rhyming Dictionary of the English Language, by Peter Levins (1570), EETS, OS, 27, 1867, repr. 1937. Levins’ dictionary has also been published in a facsimile edition by the Scolar Press, Menston, 1969.
DeWitt T. Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries English-Latin and Latin-English Austin, 1954, pp. 353–55. It is important to keep in mind that Levins also saw his dictionary as an English-Latin dictionary ‘for beginners, & them that are pooreable to have no better’, a cheap multi-purpose dictionary for those who could not afford the dictionary by ’Master Howlet’ (= Huloet’s Abcedarium 1552). Quotations are from Wheatley’s edition, p. xxvii.
ed. Wheatley, p. xxiv.
J.C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (eds.), Spenser, Poetical Works London, 1912, repr. 1965, pp. 416–17.
For a somewhat more detailed discussion of the glosses to the Shepheardes Calender see. J. Kerling, ‘English Old-Word Glossaries 1553–1594’, Neophilologus 63, 1979, pp. 138–40.
For a survey of articles on Spenser’s diction in the Shepheardes Calender see E. Greenlaw, C.G. Osgood, F.M. Padelford, R. Heffner (eds.), The Works of Edmund Spenser:A Variorum. Edition vol.7, London, Baltimore, 1943, repr. 1966, appendix iv, pp. 614–30. See also Veré L. Rubel, Poetic Diction in the English Renaissance from Skelton through Spenser New York, 1941, repr. 1966.
Quotations from Spenser are from the edition by Smith and De Selincourt (see above, note 4).
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Kerling, J. (1979). Peter Levins: Manipulus Vocabulorum (1570). In: Chaucer in Early English Dictionaries. Germanic and Anglistic Studies of the University of Leiden, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7024-8_4
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