**, 1779, “Preface”, in Robert Kelham[A Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language], 1843 ed. edition, page 3:
So many Statutes, Acts of State, Records, Law Books, and MSS. are extant in the Norman and Old French language, that a dictionary is become necessary to enable the reader to understand such difficult words as occur therein in that language; whether such difficulty arises from the words being merely idiomatical, or from the inorthography of them.
