Cotgrave, RANDLE

Cotgrave, RANDLE, author of our earliest French dictionary, but of whose life little is known save that he was a native of Cheshire; was admitted scholar of St John's College, Cambridge, in 1587; became secretary to William Cecil, Lord Burghley; and was alive as late as 1632, in which year he carried the second edition of his dictionary through the press. The first edition had appeared in 1611, and editions revised by James Howell were issued in 1650, 1660, and 1673. Cotgrave's dictionary was a really remarkable book for its time, and is still invaluable to the philologist, not only as a storehouse of older English words, but because it fixes the actual forms of French words—though it is inevitably crowded with mistakes.