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In editing the present volume I have thought it well to follow the same rule which I laid down for myself in editing The Study of Words , and have made no alteration in the text of Dr. Trench’s work (the fifth edition). Any corrections or additions that seemed to be demanded owing to the progress of lexicographical knowledge have been reserved for the foot-notes, and these can always be distinguished from those in the original by the square brackets [thus] within which they are placed.
On the whole more corrections have been required in English Past and Present than in The Study of Words owing to the sweeping statements which involve universal negatives—statements, e.g. that certain words either first came into use, or ceased to be employed, at a specific date. Nothing short of the combined researches of an army of co-operative workers, such as the New English Dictionary commanded, could warrant the correctness of assertions of this kind, which imply an exhaustive acquaintance with a subject so immense as the entire range of English literature.
Even the mistakes of a learned man are instructive to those who essay to follow in his steps, and it is not without use to point them out instead of ignoring or expunging them. Thus, when the Archbishop falls into the error (venial when he wrote) of assuming an etymological connexion between certain words which have a specious air of kinship—such as ‘care’ and ‘cura,’ ‘bloom’ and ‘blossom,’ ‘ghastly’ and ‘ghostly,’ ‘brat’ and ‘brood,’ ‘slow’ and ‘slough’—he makes just the mistakes which we would be tempted to make ourselves had not Professor Skeat and Dr. Murray and the great German School of philologists taught us to know better. Our plan, therefore, has been to leave such errors in the text and point out the better way in the notes. In other words, we have treated the Archbishop’s work as a classic, and the occasional emendations in the notes serve to mark the progress of half a century of etymological investigation. It is hardly necessary to point out that the chronological landmarks occurring here and there need an obvious equation of time to make them correct for the present year of grace, e.g. ‘lately,’ when it occurs, must be understood to mean at least fifty years ago, and a similar addition must be made to other time-points when they present themselves.