to an English School in this University, 'It is chiefly intended for the more-knowing Women, and less-knowing Men; or indeed for all such of the unlearned, who can but finde in an Alphabet the word they vnderstand not.'
It is noticeable that all these references to the needs of women disappear from the later editions, and are wanting in later dictionaries after 1660; whether this was owing to the fact that the less-knowing women had now come upsides with the more-knowing men; or that with the Restoration, female education went out of fashion, and women sank back again into elegant illiteracy, I leave to the historian to discover; I only, as a lexicographer, record the fact that from the Restoration the dictionaries are silent about the education of women, till we pass the Revolution settlement and reach the Age of Queen Anne, when J. K. in 1702 tells us that his dictionary is 'chiefly designed for the benefit of young Scholars, Tradesmen, Artificers, and the female sex, who would learn to spell truely.'
Blount's Glossographia went through many editions down to 1707; but two years after its appearance, Edward Phillips, the son of Milton's sister Anne, published his New World of Words, which Blount with some reason considered to be largely plagiarized from his book. He held his peace, however, until Phillips brought out a Law-Dictionary or Nomothetes, also largely copied from his own Nomo-lexicon, when he could refrain himself no longer, and burst upon the world with his indignant pamphlet, 'A World of Errors
