6th of April 1725. He wrote Lexicon rationale, sive thesaurus
philosophicus ordine alphabetico digestus, Rotterdami, 1692,
fol., 746 pages and 30 plates. An improved and enlarged edition
was printed as Lexicon philosophicum secundis curis, Leovardiae,
1713, large folio, 725 pages and 30 plates. This great work
may be considered as a dictionary of the Cartesian philosophy,
and was very much used by Brucker and other earlier historians
of philosophy. It is written in a very dry and scholastic style,
and seldom names authorities.
The great dictionary of French, begun by the French Academy on the 7th of February 1639, excluded all words especially belonging to science and the arts. But the success of the rival dictionary of Furetière, which, as its title-page, as well as that of the Essais published in 1684, conspicuously announced, professed to give “les termes de toutes les Sciences et des Arts,” induced Thomas Corneille, a member of the Academy, to compile Le Dictionnaire des arts et des sciences, which the Academy published with the first edition of their dictionary, Paris, 1694, folio, as a supplement in two volumes containing 1236 pages. It was reprinted at Amsterdam, 1696, fol. 2 vols., and at Paris in 1720, and again in 1732, revised by Fontenelle. A long series of dictionaries of arts and sciences have followed Corneille in placing in their titles the arts before the sciences, which he probably did merely in order to differ from Furetière. Corneille professed to quote no author whom he had not consulted; to take plants from Dioscorides and Matthiolus, medicine from Ettmüller, chemistry from a MS. of Perrault, and architecture, painting and sculpture from Félibien; and to give an abridged history of animals, birds and fishes, and an account of all religious and military orders and their statutes, heresiarchs and heresies, and dignities and charges ancient and modern.
Pierre Bayle (born on the 18th of November 1647, died on the 28th of December 1706) wrote a very important and valuable work, Dictionnaire historique et critique, Rotterdam, 1697, fol. 2 vols. His design was to make a dictionary of the errors and omissions of Moréri and others, but he was much embarrassed by the numerous editions and supplements of Moréri. A second edition with an additional volume appeared at Amsterdam in 1702, fol. 3 vols. The fourth edition, Rotterdam, 1720, fol. 4 vols., was much enlarged from his manuscripts, and was edited by Prosper Marchand. It contains 3132 pages besides tables, &c. The ninth edition was published at Basel, 1741, fol. 10 vols. It was translated into English from the second edition, London, 1709, fol. 4 vols., with some slight additions and corrections by the author; and again from the fifth edition of 1730 by Birch and Lockman, London, 1734–1740, fol. 5 vols. J. G. de Chaufepié published Nouveau Dictionnaire historique, Amsterdam, 1750–1756, fol. 4 vols., as a supplement to Bayle. It chiefly consists of the articles added by the English translators with many corrections and additions, and about 500 new articles added by himself, and contains in all about 1400 articles. Prosper Marchand, editor of the fourth edition, left at his death on the 14th of January 1756 materials for a supplementary Dictionnaire historique, La Haye, 1758, fol. 2 vols., 891 pages, 136 articles. It had occupied his leisure moments for forty years. Much of his work was written on small scraps of paper, sometimes 20 in half a page and no larger than a nail, in such small characters that not only the editor but the printer had to use powerful magnifiers. Bayle’s dictionary was also translated into German, Leipzig, 1741–1744, fol. 4 vols., with a preface by J. C. Gottsched. It is still a work of great importance and value.
Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, a Franciscan friar, who was born in Venice about 1650, made cosmographer to the republic in 1685, became general of his order in 1702, and was found dead at his study table on the 9th of December 1718, began in 1701 to publish a general alphabetical encyclopaedia, written in Italian, at which he had been working for thirty years, Biblioteca universale sacro-profana. It was to explain more than 300,000 words, to include history and biography as well as all other subjects, and to extend to 45 volumes folio. Volumes 1-39 were to contain the dictionary A to Z; 40, 41, the supplement; 42, retractations and corrections; 43, universal index; 44, index divided into matters; 45, index in various languages. But seven volumes only were published, Venezia, 1701–1706, fol., 5609 pages, A to Caque. The first six volumes have each an index of from 28 to 48 pages (in all 224 pages) of subjects, whether forming articles or incidental. The articles in each are numbered, and amount to 30,269 in the six volumes, which complete the letter B. On an average 3 pages contain 22 articles. Each volume is dedicated to a different patron—the pope, the doge, the king of Spain, &c. This work is remarkable for the extent and completeness of its plan, and for being the first great alphabetical encyclopaedia, as well as for being written in a modern language, but it was hastily written and very incorrect. Never, perhaps, says Tiraboschi (Storia della letteratura italiana, viii. 546), was there so quick a writer; he composed a folio volume as easily as others would a page, but he never perfected his works, and what we have of this book will not induce us to regret the want of the remainder.
The first alphabetical encyclopaedia written in English was the work of a London clergyman, John Harris (born about 1667, elected first secretary of the Royal Society on the 30th of November 1709, died on the 7th of September 1719), Lexicon technicum, or an universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, London, 1704, fol., 1220 pages, 4 plates, with many diagrams and figures printed in the text. Like many subsequent English encyclopaedias the pages are not numbered. It professes not merely to explain the terms used in the arts and sciences, but the arts and sciences themselves. The author complains that he found much less help from previous dictionaries than one would suppose, that Chauvin is full of obsolete school terms, and Corneille gives only bare explanations of terms, which often relate only to simple ideas and common things. He omits theology, antiquity, biography and poetry; gives only technical history, geography and chronology; and in logic, metaphysics, ethics, grammar and rhetoric, merely explains the terms used. In mathematics and anatomy he professes to be very full, but says that the catalogues and places of the stars are very imperfect, as Flamsteed refused to assist him. In botany he gave from Ray, Morrison and Tournefort “a pretty exact botanick lexicon, which was what we really wanted before,” with an account of all the “kinds and subalternate species of plants, and their specific differences” on Ray’s method. He gave a table of fossils from Dr Woodward, professor of medicine in Gresham College, and took great pains to describe the parts of a ship accurately and particularly, going often on board himself for the purpose. In law he abridged from the best writers what he thought necessary. He meant to have given at the end an alphabet for each art and science, and some more plates of anatomy and ships, “but the undertaker could not afford it at the price.” A review of his work, extending to the unusual length of four pages, appeared in the Philosophical Transactions, 1704, p. 1699. This volume was reprinted in 1708. A second volume of 1419 pages and 4 plates appeared in 1710, with a list of about 1300 subscribers. Great part of it consisted of mathematical and astronomical tables, as he intended his work to serve as a small mathematical library. He was allowed by Sir Isaac Newton to print his treatise on acids. He gives a table of logarithms to seven figures of decimals (44 pages), and one of sines, tangents and secants (120 pages), a list of books filling two pages, and an index of the articles in both volumes under 26 heads, filling 50 pages. The longest lists are law (1700 articles), chyrurgery, anatomy, geometry, fortification, botany and music. The mathematical and physical part is considered very able. He often mentions his authorities, and gives lists of books on particular subjects, as botany and chronology. His dictionary was long very popular. The fifth edition was published in 1736, fol. 2 vols. A supplement, including no new subjects, appeared in 1744, London, fol., 996 pages, 6 plates. It was intended to rival Ephraim Chambers’s work (see below), but, being considered a bookseller’s speculation, was not well received.
Johann Hübner, rector of the Johanneum in Hamburg, born on the 17th of March 1668, wrote prefaces to two dictionaries written in German, which bore his name, and were long popular.
