SOURCE: A review of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, in American Journal of Philology, Vol. 5, 1884, pp. 359-66.

In the following review, Garnett compares and contrasts Murray's A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles to An Anglo-Saxon Dicitonary, finding Murray's work the more valuable.

English lexicography is at last beginning to receive the attention it deserves and requires. The publication of the works above mentioned [An Anglo-Saxon Dicitonary and A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles], of the second especially, will carry beyond the narrow circle of scholars the much-needed public information that the English language has a history, a history which every English-speaking man and woman should know; and that the English language did not begin with Shakspere, nor even with Chaucer—an old story, but one hitherto much neglected. Prof. Toller has done well to re-edit Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, first published in 1838,—how well, critics...