Furnivall pointed out many years ago the necessity of a Chaucer
concordance, and a certain amount of more or less unsystematic work in
accordance with his suggestions had been done by various persons when
in 1890 Dr. Flugel volunteered to carry on the task. Whose hand it was
that brought the slips into the worse than chaotic condition of which
Dr. Flugel speaks in an article addressed to Furnivall I have not learned,
though my impression is that there had been some futile attempt at col-
laboration. It was characteristic of Dr. Flugel, whose brain teemed with
grandiose visions of scholarly achievement and whose indomitable energy
and then robust health made all things seem possible, that the compara-
tively modest plan of a concordance should be rapidly expanded into that
of a dictionary. It was in the same way characteristic of his sanguine
nature that this dictionary should be conceived on a scale, which, as he
came reluctantly to perceive, was beyond the powers of any one man to
realize. And, characteristically again, the reduced scale was itself one
that would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.
Yet for him this restricted scale was realizable. It must be empha-
sized that Dr. Flugel was pursuing no will o' the wisp, no fleeting phan-
tom that ever persistently evaded his enclosing arms. Already could he
descry the distant land. He might already have exclaimed,

Jam tandem Italiae fugientis prendimus oras.
