Volume 1
A glossary, or, Collection of words, phrases, names, and allusions to customs, proverbs, etc., which have been thought to require illustration, in the works of English authors, particularly Shakespeare, and his contemporaries / [Robert Nares].
- Robert Nares
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A glossary, or, Collection of words, phrases, names, and allusions to customs, proverbs, etc., which have been thought to require illustration, in the works of English authors, particularly Shakespeare, and his contemporaries / [Robert Nares]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![an absolute want, that the present edition was undertaken. The field in which Nares laboured, though wide in his time, has been considerably enlarged since, and there are few students in the literature of the Elizabethan period who, in using his work, have not been able to add to it words and phrases which had not fallen under his notice, or new and valuable examples illustrative of those which he had given. The editors had made a large collection of such additions, and with this advantage it was thought desirable to give something more than a bare reprint. It is evident that a work like this can never be complete; but it is believed that by these additions Nares’s Glossary may be made somewhat more so, and at all events it cannot but be rendered more useful. The additional words and examples are distinguished from those in the original text by a f prefixed to them. The principle followed in the selection of these additions has been to give words and phrases from books popular at the time when they were published, which have become now very rare, tending to clear np difficulties in writers of that age who are more generally known or who are better deserving of general attention. From these illustrations, some words and phrases only partially understood before, will now receive new light; while others are given because they are rare and curious, and may explain difficult passages in authors of this period which have not yet been brought into discus- sion. It is for this reason that some new words, the meaning of which could only be given by conjecture, have been left with no other explanation than that furnished by the passages in which they occur ; future researches may fix their meaning more exactly. To these additions, and to a correct reprint of Nares, the editors have almost limited themselves. The errors of his book are comr paratively so few, and of so little importance, that it has been thought advisable to interfere as little as possible with his text. A few necessary corrections only, with some slight modifications of what he has written, have been added within brackets [ ], to keep them distinct from the rest. It remains only to add that a few additional words have been contributed by friends; and among these the editors cannot but acknowledge their obligations to the Rev. Richard Hooper, to whom the public owes so excellent an edition of Chapman’s Homer,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24872180_0001_0009.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
