the corpus, épinal, erfurt and leyden glossaries, viii - World eBook ...

PART II
Part II deals with the material used for the second portion
of each section in the EE Glossary. These second portions
are
arranged by AB-, the first two letters of the word being regarded ;
whereas the first portions, arranged by A-, regard only the initial.
As a rule the first portions comprise at least two-thirds of each
section, as is shewn in the table on the next page.
These second portions of the sections contain, for the most
part, borrowings from the Abstrusa Glossary, but also some from
the Abolita Glossary, as well as Virgil items not found in these
two collections, Bible items, and so on. How are we to explain
their AB-arrangement ? Two hypotheses have been offered. One,
that the compiler of the EE Glossary, after writing out two- thirds
of his material in an A- order, arranged the remaining
third in an
AB-order, perhaps with the intention of subsequently introducing
the more advanced alphabetical arrangement into the rest also.
That intention, not carried out by the EE-compiler, was carried
out by the compiler of Corpus. For in Corpus (at least in the
Corpus College MS.), the whole material (i.e. both the material
used in the first portions of the EE-sections,and the material used
in the second portions) has been arranged in AB-order. The
second hypothesis declares the EE-compiler to have had two sorts
of material, (1) a material which, if arranged at all, was arranged
in an A-order merely, (2) a material already arranged in AB-order.
Of this AB-material the EE- compiler made much more sparing
use than of the other, the A-material.
The second hypothesis is the right one. Readers of the follow- •
ing pages will need no arguments in its favour, although there
may still be doubt regarding the exact procedure followed by the
various compilers. So much is clear, that the Corpus compiler
made far freer use of this AB-material than the compiler of the
EE Glossary. So did the compiler of the Second Erfurt (or
Second Amplonian) Glossary, a glossary which consists of this
material and of hardly anything else. For the eight glosses in the
IN-section of EE (second portion ;
if indeed there was a second
'