e apologetic tone of his preface it is clear that
he felt Huguitio's work to be the really scientific thing, the only
book that a scholar would consult: but evidently experience had shown
the difficulty of using it, and therefore for the weakness of lesser
men like himself he reverted to the sequence of the alphabet. In
cumbering himself with derivations, too, he shows that he knows his
place. He may have had a glimmering that some of them were absurd; and
that Priscian with his reference to the Greek was a safer guide. But
to a scholar brought up on Huguitio derivations were of the first
importance; and to leave them out would have been only another mark of
inferiority.

Beyond Huguitio we may go back to Papias, a learned Lombard (_fl._
1051), whose Vocabulary was still in use in the fifteenth century, and
was printed at Milan in 1476. The editions of it are far fewer than
those of the _Catholicon_; a fact which presumably points to the
superiority of the later work. Papias also used the alphabetical
principle; and his lengthy explanation of it, which lacks, however,
the lucidity of Balbi's, probably implies that his predecessors had
adopted the etymological arrangement by derivations, or the divisions
of Isidore according to subjects. In a few cases he makes concession
to etymology, by giving derivatives under their root, e.g. under ago
come all the words derived from it: but he has regard to the weak, and
places them also in their right alphabetical position. Not many
derivations are given; but one of them is well known. Lucus is defined
as 'locus amenus, vbi multae arbores sunt. Lucus dictus [Greek: kata
antiphrasin] quia caret luce pro nimia arborum vmbra; vel a colocando
crebris luminibus (_aliter_ uiminibus), siue a luce, quod in eo
lucebant funalia propter nemorum tenebras.' This in the hands of Balbi
becomes 'per contrarium lucus dicitur a lucendo', or, as we say
popularly, 'lucus a non lucendo.' December, again, is derived from
decem and imbres 'quibus abundare solet'; and so too the other
numbered months.

It is noticeable that Papias has some knowledge of Greek, for
derivations in Greek letters occur, e.g. 'Acrocerauni: montes propter
altitudinem & fulminum iactus dicti. Graece enim fulmen [Greek:
keraunos] ceraunos dicitur, et acra [Greek: akra] sumitas'; and a
great many Greek and Hebrew words are given transliterated into Latin,
ballein, fagein, Ennosigaeus. Like Balbi, Papias travels outside the
limit