Francis March was a Professor of English Language and ComparativePhilology at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. The study of Englishin higher education was a development of the nineteenth century, and it tooka long time for English studies to gain recognition. March’s appointment as aProfessor of English in 1857 had been the first in the world that had theprestige of a full professorship – Rutgers appointed its first English professorin 1860, Harvard in 1876, and Oxford in 1885.

Maitland co-wrote History of English Law with Frederick Pollock.

We think of the OED as a radical dictionary because of its size, itsscholarship, and its methods, and it was radical for English. But if youcompare it with other languages, there was nothing about its creation in themid-nineteenth century that had not been done before in Europe. English wasrelatively late to the table. The English editors were able to pick and choosethe best methods from different European dictionaries. The OEDimplemented European lexicographic practices, and advanced upon them, tocreate something truly revolutionary, something that would in fact end upbeing the envy of Europe.

This image resonates with the earliest description of an English poet, which we find in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in the year 731. Bede, a prolific monk and scholar from the monastery of Jarrow in Northumbria, provides an account of a certain Caedmon, an illiterate brother at the abbey at Whitby, who is visited by God and taught to sing beautiful poetry. Caedmon remains an oral poet, but his literate brothers write down his poetry for him.

seemeth