ABSTRACT
PROFESSOR Einar Haugen, in the monograph in which he has recently made available to English-speaking scholars "the earliest Germanic phonology," the unique First Grammatical Treatise by an anonymous Icelandic author of the twelfth century, has noted, in passing, an interesting parallel between the First Grammarian's work and the remarks on spelling reform made by the sixteenth-century English lexicographer, John Baret.1 "One would almost think," Professor Haugen says of Baret, "that he had drawn his ideas directly from the F[irst] G[rammatical] T[reatise], if this were not entirely excluded." Perhaps it may be useful to draw, for students of English literature in the Renaissance, the obvious, but too often neglected, conclusion which follows from such a striking testimony to the range and permanence of a learned tradition. I shall proceed to this conclusion by examining the significance of a number of parallel passages, taken chiefly, as Professor Haugen's remark would suggest, from Renaissance dictionaries. The passages cited will serve, I hope, not only to establish my simple thesis but to clarify some problems in the history of English lexicography and to give fuller meanings to some lines in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.
