Laudator Temporis Acti

George Steiner, After Babel (1975; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 24:

A true reader is a dictionary addict. He knows that English is particularly well served, from Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, through Kurath and Kuhn's Middle English Dictionary to the almost incomparable resources of the O.E.D. (both Grimm's Wörterbuch and the Littré are invaluable but neither French nor German have found their history and specific genius as completely argued and crystallized in a single lexicon). Rossetti's geomaunt will lead to Shipley's Dictionary of Early English and the reassurance that 'the topic is capped with moromancy, foolish divination, a i7th century term that covers them all'. Skeat's Etymological Dictionary and Principles of English Etymology are an indispensable first step towards grasping the life of words. But each period has its specialized topography. Skeat and Mayhew's Glossary of Tudor and Stuart Words necessarily accompanies one's reading of English literature from Skelton to Marvell. No one will get to the heart of the Kipling world, or indeed clear up certain cruces in Gilbert and Sullivan without Sir H. Yule and A.C. Burnell's Hobson Jobson. Dictionaries of proverbs and place-names are essential. Behind the façade of public discourse extends the complex, shifting terrain of slang and taboo speech. Without such quarries as Champion's L'Argot ancien and Eric Partridge's lexica of underworld usage, much of Western literature, from Villon to Genet is only partly legible.