information, and which are, at the same time, untainted with the deadly poison which mingles in every stream that issues from this.

As far as we are able to judge, the translator, Mr. William W. Turner, has done his part well. The language is well chosen; and the general style is characterized by clearness and purity. Occasionally, the words which form the logical connectives of sentences are such as a close thinker would hardly employ; but this may have originated in the difficulties attendant on a translation from another language.

Hope, N. J., 1846.

ART. IV.-1. A Greek-English Lexicon, based on the German Work of Francis Passow. By HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL, M. A., and ROBERT SCOTT, M. A. With Corrections and Additions, and the Insertion, in Alphabetical Order, of the Proper Names occurring in the Principal Greek Authors, by H. DRISLER, M. A., Adjunct Professor of the Greek and Latin Languages in Columbia College, New-York. Pp. 1705. New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1846.

2. A Comprehensive Lexicon of the Greek Language, adapted to the Use of Colleges and Schools in the United States. Third edition, greatly enlarged and improved, by JOHN PICKERING. Pp. 1456. Boston. 1846.

3. A New Greek Lexicon, principally on the Plan of the Greek and German Lexicon of Schneider. By JAMES DONNEGAN, M. D. Revised and enlarged by R. B. PATON. Pp. 1413. Boston and New-York.

It is now exactly forty years since the first publication in Germany of Schneider's "Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch," the earliest Lexicon which boldly ventured to throw aside the Latin as the medium of teaching Greek, and to adopt instead the student's mother tongue. It has proved a fruitful parent-its issue, "magna diversaque Proles." Since that time, vernacular Greek Lexicons have swarmed upon scholars. Years have done the work of ages. Before, generations-now, but months pass between successive editions; and, to bring the matter to a climax, in the month of August last, within two days of each other, came forth from the rival presses of New-York and Boston the two greatest works of this kind that American scholarship has as yet produced-Professor Drisler's bearing date the 18th, Mr. Pickering's the 20th of August, 1846.

Now this fact is one of deeper import than at first sight appears. It is not merely the enlarged current of a more studious agestudents the cause, and books the result. On the contrary, the books were the cause, and the students the consequence. What we mean to say is this, The substitution of the vernacular for the Latin is the secret of the change. It was like striking a new vein, or opening a fresh fountain. It was a change that at once popularized Greek studies, by enabling the student to look at them directly through the medium of his own tongue, instead of giving him a feeble and distorted reflection from what may well be called a dull mirror-the student's imperfect knowledge of the Latin. Latin spectacles once taken off, youthful eyes saw clearer, the mist was removed, and the young scholar soon learned both to understand and admire what before he only admired how any one could understand. Such we hold to be the giant step taken in the "Wörterbuch" of Schneider. Nor are we left to argue its advantages. Experience has demonstrated them. Latin has been driven from the field-the vernacular has gained an overwhelming victory-not, as usual in great changes, young reformers slowly winning their way against sturdy old conservations, as Hume tells us of Harvey's great discovery of the circulation of the blood, which no physician in Europe, over the age of fifty, ever acknowledged. Here, on the contrary, old experience first followedeven the octogenarian pedagogue was seen to drop his Hedericus, or Schrevelius, and take up his Schneider as if by natural instinct. Such is the alacrity with which man obeys where nature and good sense lead the way. Since that time, both instructors and learners, German and English at least, have luxuriated, we may say, in the comfort of Greek Lexicons in their own mother tongue. Nor (to return to the question again) was the boy's ignorance of Latin the only objection to its use. With all its stately beauties, Latin is still a "cast-iron "tongue," inflexible and unaccommodating; pre-eminently unfit, therefore, to represent the infinite graces of the language of the muses. Grecian thoughts in Latin words have always seemed to us like precious gems taken in plasteryou have the form, but not the power. All which gave it grace, delicacy, and expression, are gone. Nor let the admirers of Cicero or Lucretius quarrel with us for this judgment. We learned it from those very authors whom they admire. Lucretius himself bemoans "egestatem linguæ," the poverty of the language to which he was condemned, while Cicero's pages actually "bristle" with Greek words, simply because his own tongue furnished him with no equivalents. Even the very banner word

of his favorite philosophy (πоxý) he was forced to borrow from its native fountain-being unable, as he himself acknowledges, to translate it. Such was the Latin as a medium of Greek thought, even in master hands, and in its palmiest days; what, then, must it now be in the hands of modern lexicographers? But still the benefit of this exchange is very far from equal to all modern tongues. Germany, unquestionably, has the best bargain, because its "vernacular" approaches the nearest to that of Greece in all its high and varied excellences. If not (as the Greeks boasted) avтoyεvýs, "self-born"-it is at least oμoyevs, "self-compounded." Its radicals are within itself, and therefore capable, like the Greek, of unlimited composition. This vast advantage, which it enjoys far beyond any modern tongue, fits it peculiarly to take the stamp of Grecian thought and art, while, with its infinitely diversified metres of both quantity and accent, it is obviously the only modern language which can even pretend to enter into rivalry with poets, "quibus," as the Roman Martial enviously complains,―

"Nil erat negatum

Et quos 'Apes-Apes decet sonare."

But we of Saxon race have at least the comfort of thinking that next to the German in this list stands the English, a language, which-with its double tongue, (Britannia bilinguis ;) its Doric and its Attic dialects, affording synonyms of nicest distinction; its Saxon words of fresh vigor, and its Latin words of polished refinement-forms no contemptible rival even to its cousin German. Lowest in this scale comes the French tongue, which has been also latest to profit by the improvement, the antipodes of the Greek, both in freedom and harmony, in loftiness, as well as variety of expression: we have yet to learn what influence will be produced on its scholarship by the change. We cannot, we confess, augur well of a language which, in the hands of its master genius, brought forth a Henriade, as the nearest approach it could make to an Homeric Iliad.

But turning to our own western land, we too have taken hold of this new instrument; we too have laid our hand on the Grecian plough, and that not only with our characteristic zeal, but also with more than our characteristic success. The rapid advancement of not only American scholarship, but of high American contributions to Greek scholarship; and, above all, in the department of philology; is a fact as honorable to our scholars as it is unquestioned. In our wide, bustling, utilitarian land, it is a fact

perhaps as little known as cared for, but still it is one that begins to tell at home, and has already told sensibly abroad, in awakening respectful attention toward our country and its scholars. It is, in truth, a forward national impulse, just beginning to be generally felt; and one which, we doubt not, will, in the space of no very long time, (notwithstanding all our present deficiencies in libraries and learned endowments,) enable us to rival our German teachers, and perhaps outstrip our English ones.

Now this may sound very boastful-Anglice, American-likebut we speak it in no such spirit, but simply in a reasonable estimate of the future by the past, and of admitted causes, now actually in operation. In the first place, the American market for such works is growing, and must continue to grow, with a rapidity that distances all European competition. The recompense to scholarship will consequently advance in the same proportion, and thus call forth, as well as reward, the talent and industry needful for it. If learning be a marketable and profitable commodity, we may rest assured our country will not be backward in furnishing it. Under such patronage, too, libraries will spring up, giving to the scholar the needful books and endowments, affording to him the needful leisure. These both are the legitimate offspring of that love which comes from knowledge, when married to that wealth which comes from industry. Now of such fair progeny, in future time, we want no better proof than that afforded by the learned works whose titles we have given, in one of which, at least, all their elements prominently appear, namely, a generous love for that noble language in which Homer sung and Plato reasoned, turning into a laborious lexicographer one whom leisure, fortune, and taste seemed to have marked out as the patron of others' labors, rather than himself the drudge. But with the late Mr. Pickering, (alas that we must thus write him!) as with all true lovers, entire affection scorned meaner hands, and he himself became an humble laborer; for more than thirty years (the work having been begun in 1814, and but completed in 1846) an humble and patient, yet skillful, laborer in building for others' use the fair temple of American scholarship. Now this we say is a spirit of love and zeal, growing and spreading in our land. It is sowing the good seed broadcast over it, and out of it will come forth, at no distant day, a golden harvest-libraries for the scholars, and scholars for the libraries-learned endowments to give leisure, and worthy men to employ it aright. One further national characteristic, of which American scholarship already reaps the advantage, is the intermixture in it of German with

Saxon blood, adding, in our judgment, a new element of power to the classical scholar, and a new guaranty of success to his labors, and that more especially in the department now before us, of philological learning. How far this element has already contributed to the rank and reputation of American scholarship it is not for us to say; suffice it, it is well known as no foreign element in our highest names, nor a small ingredient in the merits of the first-named and greatest of the three Lexicons before us.

But to turn to that volume, the first-named in our list, our first thought of wonder on opening such a work is, how any human patience could stand the drudgery of its preparation, its seventeen hundred close-printed pages, and seventeen thousand articles, and perhaps one hundred thousand cited authorities. But the true solution quickly suggests itself that no one man's industry or scholarship has effected it-that it has been, in truth, the product of a thousand minds and a thousand years-and that no one editor, however learned or laborious, can claim more than a very small fractional part of the whole merit. It has been a cumulative work, growing by slow accretion, even from the days of the Alexandrian critics; and he who has done most toward its completion has still but added his one stone, or cleared up the rubbish in one little corner. Such is the history of the Greek Lexicon of the present day, by whomsoever edited-its age runs back to the age of the Ptolemies. Still, however, there are special merits among lexicographers, and some of a higher order-such as from time to time break forth, throwing light on the true plan and principle of such a work, and adding, at once, largely and definitely to its practical value.

Before entering pointedly on the comparative merits of the works before us, it may be interesting to trace, succinctly, the rise and general progress of that on which they all rest.

When we look for the roots, and the beginning of the Greek Lexicons, we are carried back, as already observed, to the Alexandrian age, some two hundred and fifty years before Christ; the earliest grammatical, the latest literary age of Greece. We there find, not Lexicons, indeed, but the seed of Lexicons-λéžɛç, collections of special words; and yλwooa, glossaries of obsolete ones-sometimes confined to the examination of single authors, as Ομηρικαί, Πλατωνικαί, &c. Again, extending to classes, or styles of writing, as voμikaí, pηтopikaí, &c.; but as yet nothing that can be regarded as a dictionary of the tongue. They who spoke the language needed no such work; and for barbarians the