But it is on his Latin Dictionary that the fame of Thomas Thomas chiefly rests. "In hoc opere" he writes on the title-page, "quid sit praestitum ad superiores λεξικογραφοὺς adjectum, docebit epistola ad Lectorem" and in the epistola we learn how the work came into being:
Precibus enim Ludimagistrorum ac studiosorum victus, quibus accessit etiam amicorum frequens postulatio, ex immenso Lexicorum pelago nostrum contraxi, quod trivialibus saltem ludis inserviret.
The last words of this same address to the reader show that, like Johnson's, the dictionary was not compiled "in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers":
Cantebrigiae ex nostris aedibus, carptim inter operarum susurros, Tertio Nonas Septembres, Anno salutis per Christum Dominum partae, 1587.
In the eleventh edition, printed by Thomas's successor in 1619, the following tribute is paid to him in the dedication to Francis Bacon:
He was about 30 years ago a famous Printer among your Cantabrigians; yes something more than a Printer such as we now are, who understand the Latin that we print no more than Bellerophon the letters he carried, and who sell in our shops nothing of our own except the paper black with the press's sweat. But he, a companion of the Stephenses and of the other, very few, printers of the true kind and best omen, was of opinion that it was men of learning, thoroughly imbued with academic studies, who should give themselves to cultivating and rightly applying that illustrious benefit sent down from heaven and given to aid mankind and perpetuate the arts. Accordingly what more fit than that when he had wrought what was worthy of type, he should himself, needing aid of none, act as midwife to his own progeny.
Thomas's printing-office was in the Regent Walk, immediately opposite the west door of Great St Mary's; his death is said to have been hastened by the labours of the dictionary, and in 1588 he was buried in the churchyard of Great St Mary's.
ORNAMENT USED BY THOMAS THOMAS