ade belieue)
it will not prooue altogether vngratefull.' In similar words, the
title-page of Cockeram's Dictionary proclaims its purpose of 'Enabling
as well Ladies and Gentlewomen ... as also Strangers of any Nation to
the vnderstanding of the more difficult Authors already printed in our
Language, and the more speedy attaining of an elegant perfection of
the English tongue, both in reading, speaking, and writing.' And
Thomas Blount, setting forth the purpose of his _Glossographia_, says,
in words of which one seems to have heard an echo in reference to an
English School in this University, 'It is chiefly intended for the
more-knowing Women, and less-knowing Men; or indeed for all such of
the unlearned, who can but finde in an Alphabet the word they
understand not.'

It is noticeable that all these references to the needs of women
disappear from the later editions, and are wanting in later
dictionaries after 1660; whether this was owing to the fact that the
less-knowing women had now come upsides with the more-knowing men; or
that with the Restoration, female education went out of fashion, and
women sank back again into elegant illiteracy, I leave to the
historian to discover; I only, as a lexicographer, record the fact
that from the Restoration the dictionaries are silent about the
education of women, till we pass the Revolution settlement and reach
the Age of Queen Anne, when J.K. in 1702 tells us that his dictionary
is 'chiefly designed for the benefit of young Scholars, Tradesmen,
Artificers, and the female sex, who would learn to spell truely.'

Blount's _Glossographia_ went through many editions down to 1707; but
two years after its appearance, Edward Phillips, the son of Milton's
sister Anne, published his _New World of Words_, which Blount with
some reason considered to be largely plagiarized from his book. He
held his peace, however, until Phillips brought out a Law-Dictionary
or _Nomothetes_, also largely copied from his own _Nomo-lexicon_, when
he could refrain himself no longer, and burst upon the world with his
indignant pamphlet, 'A World of Errors discovered in the New World of
Words, and in Nomothetes or the Interpreter,' in which he exhibits the
proofs of Phillips's cribbing, and makes wild sport of the cases in
which his own errors and misprints had either been copied or muddled
by his plagiarist. The latter did not vouchsafe a reply; he knew a
better plan; he quietly corrected in his next edition t