book which has generally been found of most assistance to the learner
is probably Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words;
but this is not specially confined to the Middle-English period, and
the plan of it differs in several respects from that of the present
work.

The scope of this volume will be best understood by an explanation of
the circumstances that gave rise to it. Some useful and comparatively
inexpensive volumes illustrative of the Middle-English period have
been issued by the Clarendon Press; all of which are furnished with
glossaries, explaining all the important words, with exact references
to the passages wherein the words occur. In particular, the three
useful hand-books containing Specimens of English (from 1150 down to
1580) together supply no less than sixty-seven characteristic extracts
from the most important literary monuments of this period; and the
three glossaries to these books together fill more than 370 pages of
closely-printed type in double columns. The idea suggested itself that
it would be highly desirable to bring the very useful information thus
already collected _under one alphabet_, and this has now been
effected. At the same time, a reference has in every case been
carefully given to the _particular_ Glossarial Index which
registers each form here cited, so that it is perfectly easy for any
one who consults our book to refer, not merely to the particular Index
thus noted, but to the references given in that Index; and so, by
means of such references, to find every passage referred to, with its
proper context. Moreover the student only requires, for this purpose,
a small array of the text-books in the Clarendon Press Series, instead
of a more or less complete set of editions of Middle-English texts,
the possession of which necessitates a considerable outlay of
money. By this plan, so great a _compression_ of information has