_The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature._ Eighth Edition. 21 vols. and Index. (Black.) The two editions above described are completed at the same time: and they stand at the head of the two great branches into which pantological undertakings are divided, as at once the largest and the best of their classes. When the works are brought together, the first thing that strikes the eye is the syllable of difference in the names. The word _Cyclopaedia_ is a bit of modern purism. Though [Greek: enkuklopaideia][446] is not absolutely Greek of Greece, we learn from both Pliny[447] and Quintilian[448] that the circle {281} of the sciences was so called by the Greeks, and Vitruvius[449] has thence naturalized _encyclium_ in Latin. Nevertheless we admit that the initial _en_ would have euphonized but badly with the word _Penny_: and the _English Cyclopaedia_ is the augmented, revised, and distributed edition of the _Penny Cyclopaedia_. It has indeed been said that Cyclopaedia should mean the education _of_ a circle, just as Cyropaedia is the education _of_ Cyrus. But this is easily upset by Aristotle's word [Greek: kuklophoria],[450] motion _in_ a circle, and by many other cases, for which see the lexicon. The earliest printed Encyclopaedia of this kind was perhaps the famous "myrrour of the worlde," which Caxton[451] translated from the French and printed in 1480. The original Latin is of the thirteenth century, or earlier. This is a collection of very short treatises. In or shortly after 1496 appeared the _Margarita Philosophica_ of Gregory Reisch,[452] the same we must suppose, who was confessor to the Emperor Maximilian.[453] This is again a collection of treatises, of much more pretension: and the estimation formed of it is proved by the number of editions it went through. In 1531 appeared the little collection of _works_ of Ringelberg,[454] which is truly called an Encyclopaedia by {282} Morhof, though the thumbs and fingers of the two hands will meet over the length of its one volume. There are more small collections; but we pass on to the first work to which the name of _Encyclopaedia_ is given. This is a ponderous _Scientiarum Omnium Encyclopaedia_ of Alsted,[455] in four folio volumes, commonly bound in two: published in 1629 and again in 1649; the true parent of all the Encyclopaedias, or collections of treatises, or works in which that character predominates. The first great _dictionary_ may perhaps be taken to be Hofman's _Lexicon Universale_[456] (1677); but Chambers's[457] (so called) _Dictionary_ (1728) has a better claim. And we support our proposed nomenclature by observing that Alsted accidentally called his work _En_cyclopaedia, and Chambers simply Cyclopaedia.