Save in respect to development and extension, there is no substantial difference, in fact, between the dictionaries of Elyot and Littleton or of Littleton and Ainsworth. The general plan is the same, whereas in some of the early lexicons the arrangement is so obscure and defective as to render them comparatively useless for practical purposes. The old _Ortus Vocabulorum_, one of these archaic works of reference, had been largely formed out of the _Cornucopia_ of Perottus, and Cooper owed very considerable obligations to the Lexicon of Stephanus, which he was censured by a critic of his day for not properly acknowledging. The _Short Dictionary for Children_ by Withals, already specified, supplied the obvious need for a more portable work than either Elyot or Cooper. It met with a cordial response from the constituency to which it appealed, and was reprinted, with large additions and improvements, by successive editors down to the time of Charles I. Littleton, who brought out his Dictionary in 1678, was Rector of Chelsea. He includes the barbarous Latin for the first time. Robert Ainsworth, whose famous Latin Dictionary belongs to the reign of George II., having been first printed in 1736, planned his enterprise on a sensible and enduring basis, and earned for himself the reputation of a classic and a type. He had of course the advantage of all the improvements of Elyot, Cooper, and Littleton, besides the numerous other minor lexicographers, of whom he supplies an interesting chronological account in his preface; but his substantial quarto volume, "designed for the use of the British _Nations_," was a clear advance on its precursors. He gives not only the Latin-English and English-Latin appellatives, the Christian names of men and women, the proper names of places, the ancient Latin names of places, and the more modern names, but the Roman calendar, the Roman coins, weights and measures, and ancient law-terms. Of the preceding workers in the same field, whom he commemorates, he may very well have known some personally. The catalogue, enriched with biographical particulars, begins with the _Promptuarium Parvulorum_, and closes with Elisha Coles, embracing a period of nearly two centuries. III. The Latin Lexicon was an indispensable _vade-mecum_ where boys had to translate the classics of that language into English; and the taste for some of the Roman writers, including Ovid, so far from declining, appears in the time of Elizabeth to have spread in schools. The authors at whom the criticism is more particularly aimed may be guessed in the absence of the names; but the clerical party about 1580, being of opinion that these ancient productions were injurious to morality, availed themselves of a most singularly fortunate opportunity for substituting a work which should be to Latin versification what Lily's Grammar was to English accidence--a standard and a model.