With the ascendancy of East Midland, and its acceptance as the chief literary language, the other dialects practically ceased to be recorded, with the exception (noted above) of the Scottish Northumbrian. Of English Northumbrian, the sixteenth century tells us nothing beyond what we can glean from belated copies of Northern ballads or such traces of a Northern (apparently a Lancashire) dialect as appear in Spenser's _Shepherd's Calendar_. Fitzherbert's _Boke of Husbandry_ (1534) was reprinted for the E.D.S. in 1882. It was written, not by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, as I erroneously said in the Preface, but by his brother, John Fitzherbert, as has been subsequently shown. It contains a considerable number of dialectal words. Thomas Tusser (1525-1580), born in Essex, wrote _A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie_ (1557), and _Fiue Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie_ (1573); see the edition by Payne and Herrtage, E.D.S., 1878. He employs many country words, presumably Essex. The dialect assumed by Edgar in Shakespeare's _King Lear_ is not to be taken as being very accurate; he talks somewhat like a Somersetshire peasant, but I suppose his speech to be in a conventional stage dialect, such as we find also in _The London Prodigall_, Act II, Sc. 4, where Olyver, "a Devonshire Clothier," uses similar expressions, viz. _chill_ for _Ich will_, I will; and _chy vor thee_, I warn thee. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the value of dialectal words as helping to explain our English vocabulary began to be recognised. Particular mention may be made of the _Etymologicon Lingu{ae} Anglican{ae}_, by Stephen Skinner, London, 1671; and it should be noted that this is the Dictionary upon which Dr Johnson relied for the etymology of native English words. At the same time, we must not forget to note two Dictionaries of a much earlier date, which are of high value. The former of these is the _Promptorium Parvulorum_, completed in 1440, published by the Camden Society in 1865; which contains a rather large proportion of East Anglian words. The second is the _Catholicon Anglicum_, dated 1483, ed. S.J. Herrtage, E.E.T.S., 1881, which is distinctly Northern (possibly of Yorkshire origin). We find in Skinner occasional mention of Lincolnshire words, with which he was evidently familiar. Examples are: _boggle-boe_, a spectre; _bratt_, an apron; _buffet-stool_, a hassock; _bulkar_, explained by Peacock as "a wooden hutch in a workshop or a ship."