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John Minsheu: Scholar or Charlatan?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jürgen Schäfer
Jürgen Schäfer*
Affiliation:
University of Münster
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Extract

John Minsheu, Shakespeare's contemporary, is primarily known as the author of id est, Ductor in Linguas, The Guide into Tongues (London, 1617). More than any other English work of the period the Ductor in Linguas reflects linguistic research and speculation at home and abroad and represents an important link in the beginnings of modern English lexicography. On the basis of this work Minsheu has been praised as a scholar, antiquarian, and etymologist of note.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1973 , pp. 23 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1973

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References

1 The arduous path from the work's inception through several frustrated attempts at publication has been traced in admirable detail by Franklin B. Williams, Jr., who emphasizes Minsheu's salesmanship in finally getting his book into print and sold; cf. ‘Scholarly Publication in Shakespeare's Day: A Leading Case,’ Joseph Quincy Adams: Memorial Studies, ed. James G. Mac Manaway, et al. (Washington, D.C., 1948), pp. 755-773.

2 ‘Spanish Studies in England, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ Modern Quarterly of Languages and Literature, No. 5 (1899), p. 7.

3 Starnes, DeWitt T. and Noyes, Gertrude E., The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson 1604-1755 (Chapel Hill, 1946)Google Scholar, have only a few passing remarks.

4 ‘Our Early Etymologists,’ Quarterly Review, 257 (1931), 63-72. The other works treated are Stephen Skinner's Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (1671) and Francis Junius’ Etymologicum Anglicanum (1743).

5 ‘The Sources and Methods of Minsheu's Guide into the Tongues’ Philological Quarterly, 40 (1961), 68-76.

6 Ibid., p. 68: ‘Minsheu is the first English lexicographer to make extensive citations of his sources, not only in the preface, but in each entry … . Minsheu was the first to recognize its lexicographical significance [i.e., of Old English]; moreover, no earlier English dictionary had included Chaucerian vocabulary.'

7 There are three of them: A Dictionary in Spanish and English (1599), which is a revision of Richard Percyvall's work of 1591, a Spanish-English appendix to the polyglot Ductor in Linguas of 1617, and a 1623 reprint of the first. For a detailed description and evaluation see Roger J. Steiner, Two Centuries of Spanish and English Bilingual Lexicography (1590-1800), Janua Linguarum, Series Practica, 108 (The Hague, 1970), pp. 38-57.

8 Both remarks in Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, 1 (Oxford, 1925), 133, 154f.

9 The Description of England, ed. Georges Edelen (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), p. 344.

10 Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine (London, 1605), p. 26.

11 Laurence Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum, ed. Albert H. Marckwardt (Ann Arbor, 1952).

12 That quite a number of these derivations go astray has to be attributed to the fact that, following the classical tradition, a morphological similarity is unduly emphasized at the expense of the evidence of sound shifts. This, in turn, results in the necessity to construct a semantic bridge. Typical in this regard is the derivation of beck ('nod’) from French bee ('beak’), ‘for so men becke as the bird pecketh meat with his beake.'

13 For a detailed discussion of the various etymological theories of the Renaissance see Borst, Arno, Der Turmbau von Babel: Geschichte der Meinungen über Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Volker, 4 vols. (Stuttgart, 1957-63).Google Scholar

14 Cf. Origines Antwerpianae (Antwerp, 1569) and ‘Hermathena,’ an individually paginated book in Opera Joan. Goropii Becani, Hactenus in lucent non edita (Antwerp, 1580).

15 See the introduction to De Beghinselen der Weeghconst (Leiden, 1586) and ‘Tweede Deel des Weereltschrifts vant Eertclootsschrift,’ an individually paginated part of Wisconstige Gedachtenissen (Leiden, 1608). Stevin's works have recently been edited, together with an English translation: The Principal Works of Simon Stevin, ed. Ernst Crone, et al., 5 vols. (Amsterdam, 1955-66). For additional background material see L. van den Branden, Het streven naar verheerlijking, zuivering en opboutv van het Nederlands in de 16de eeuw (Ghent, 1956).

16 Richard Foster Jones discusses the theory of Goropius but sees it primarily as another example of the patriotic exaltation of the vernacular, comparable to the awakening English interest in Saxon origins; cf. The Triumph of the English Language (Stanford, 1953), pp. 215-219, 270.

17 Cf. A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence: In Antiquities concerning the most noble and renowned English Nation (Antwerp, 1605), pp. 188-206 et passim.

18 Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1904), 11, 289.

19 Since Goropius considered Welsh to be cognate with other Germanic languages (cf. Origines Antwerpianae, p. 760), the fact that the Welsh equivalents are set in black letter type, together with Enghsh, Dutch, and High German, may be regarded as another reflection of his theories.

20 In the ‘Diatribe de Europaeorum linguis,’ published in his Opuscula varia antehac non edita (Paris, 1610), Scaliger foreshadows the discoveries of the nineteenth century by distinguishing certain matrices linguae, of which the four major ones are Latin, Greek, Germanic, and Slavic.

21 Cf. Steiner, p. 41.

22 The Dutch word babelen, ‘to talk nonsense,’ is one of Goropius’ ‘proofs’ for his theory. It supposedly expresses the disdain of the Dutch-speaking people for those who lost the original language, that is, Dutch, at the Babylonian confusion; cf. Origines Antwerpianae, p. 572.

23 Published 1600-1620; cf. STC 5493-5524.

24 First published in 1580 with many later editions; cf. STC 15017-25.

25 First published in Edinburgh in 1597 with a second edition in 1599; cf. STC 22622-23.

26 In some of his definitions Cowell supported the view that England was an absolute monarchy. This gave offense to the Commons, and James I was forced to take action against Cowell, whose book was burnt by the hangman in 1610; cf. DNB.

27 John Rastell's Termes de la Ley, the standard reference work of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, shows no interest in the linguistic origins of legal terms. John Skene's dictionary of Scottish law mentioned above had already commented on the derivations of some of its lemmata, but this had been done in the most rudimentary form ('ane French word,’ ‘ane auld Saxon worde’).

28 De Repvblica Anglorvm (London, 1583), p. 75.

29 Spelling modernized: abet, advowson, aerie, affeeror, agist, alderman, alnagcr, arrest, assach (not in O.E.D.), atheling, auncel weight, average, back-berend, bank, banneret, baselard, bauble, beadle, benevolence, blood-wite, borrow-head, borsholder, Bracton (name), bridge-bote, Britton (name), brodchalpeny, Broke (name), burgage, burglary, by-law.

30 Cf. ‘The Hard Word Dictionaries: A Re-Assessment,’ Leeds Studies in English, 4 (1970), 31-48.

31 Cf. borrow-head, borsholder, constable, gavelkind, sheriff, shire, etc.

32 Cf. Steiner, pp. 4lf., 51, 113f. In preparing a phonological study of modern Spanish Amado Alonso examined various bilingual dictionaries, among them Minsheu's Dictionary in Spanish and English. On the basis of material in this work taken without acknowledgment from continental sources he noted in passing that Minsheu was ‘multiplagiario'; cf. ‘Formacion del timbre ciceante en la c, z espafiola,’ Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica, 5 (1951), 135.

33 Cf. Skeat, Minsheu, and Cowell, s.v. Hawker.

34 John Baret's Alvearie is the best known. In the revised edition of 1580 the work contained English, Latin, Greek, and French and is probably the direct ancestor of Minsheu's Ductor in Linguas; most of Baret's lemmata reappear in Minsheu, several of his entries attempt an etymology and the format is similar, a conspicuous parallel being the running numbers for each primitive word. Although the Calepine of 1590 and 1598 contained eleven languages, this famous continental work is a Latin citation dictionary for the scholar and did not serve as a model for the Ductor in Linguas.