only to Jacobs and Dalzell, but to the original authorities. He silently altered the punctuation on almost every page of his volume; he suppressed indelicate passages; he gave in fact a far more correct text than any previous edition had exhibited; and yet we are gravely told that he plagiarised his whole text, blunders included, from the immaculate readings of the Boston edition! Before we leave this part of our subject, it may not be amiss to recur to one charge, on which we have already in some degree commented. The reviewer says, that out of thirty-one notes on the selections from Anacreon, Bion, and Moschus, as contained in the Boston edition, all but three are in some way introduced into the 'Reader' of Dr. ANTHON. The charge, as we have already said, is untrue; and any one can satisfy himself on this head, by an examination of the volume. But what if Mr. ANTHON had introduced these notes into the body of his work? Did they belong to the Boston editors? Have they not merely taken them from Dalzell, and called them their own? The truth is, that thirty of these so-called Boston notes are literally and bodily the property of Dalzell, who himself compiled most of them from others; and the only thing that belongs to the editors of the Boston work, is a mistranslation from the Greek; the meaning of a passage being correctly given by Dalzell, but the same passage being altered and converted into a blunder, in the Boston work, for the purpose, in all likelihood, of making a show of originality. Pretty people these, to talk of their thirty-one notes, when the only thing that belongs to them in the whole budget, is the following specimen of a translation from the Greek; í μñxos ouv yévnrai; 'what remedy is there?'

But they have not been content to take from Dalzell the notes on the poetry merely. They lay him under contribution wherever an opportunity presents itself. In the Dialogues of Lucian, they bear off a rich harvest of spoils; rich in a double sense, for these notes give them an air of scholarship, and save them, beside, the trouble of translating from Jacobs: although, while they are continually omitting the annotations of the German work, they assure the reader, with unblushing effrontery, that they are actually giving them all!

We come now to a very grave charge, and one which the reviewer evidently regards as in every way unanswerable. There are, he says, a great number of errors in accentuation, contained in the Greek text of the Boston work, which are corrected in the Lexicon. These same variations are observable, he adds, in the New-York work, and therefore he concludes that the latter has been taken, errors and all, from the pages of the former. To confirm this accusation, three instances are given of what he calls errors in accent, with their appropriate corrections, and this having been done, he considers his charge to have been fully made out. A brief history of the way in which the Lexicon of the New-York 'Reader' was prepared for the press, will give, we conceive, rather a different aspect to the argument. The text of the New-York 'Reader' was carefully corrected by Mr. ANTHON, according to that of Jacobs and Dalzell, and also of the authors from whom both of them selected; and, when this was done, he entered upon the preparation of the notes. The Lexicon, on the other hand, was compiled by Mr. DRISLER. The whole text was carefully read by the latter gentleman, with the view of forming a complete Lexicon to the work; and how well he has executed his task, may be seen by one simple fact, that there have been found, on a cursory examination of only a part of his labors, sixty separate words, occurring in the text of the Boston work, which are not contained in their Lexicon at all, and yet are mentioned and explained in his. In preparing his Lexicon, Mr. Drisler was principally guided in accentuation and etymologies by the authority of Passow. He consulted, however, constantly, the Lexicons of Scapula and Donnegan also, as well as many other subsidiary works. It so happened, that on several occasions the accentuation of Passow differed from that which Jacobs had adopted; and it became a question to which of the two scholars the preference should be allowed. The decision was in favor of Passow; and whenever the variations could be remembered as existing between the Lexicon and the text of the 'Reader,' the corrections were accordingly introduced

into the latter. It was impossible, however, to remember all the discrepancies of this nature; and in many instances, therefore, they were allowed to remain, as matters comparatively unimportant.

We now come to the strangest part of the whole affair. Will it be believed, that the three errors in accent, as the reviewer is pleased to call them, are in truth and in fact no errors at all, and that he has only shown his utter ignorance in calling them so ? Every scholar knows (the reviewer very probably does not) that questions of accent often arise among editors of classical works in Germany; that the discussion of such questions is regarded as no little trial of each other's skill; and that hardly a classical work appears in that country, in which some deviation from the pre-established rules of accent, in particular words, is not introduced and commented upon. Now it so happens, that Jacobs has brought in some accentual variations of this very kind, wherein he differs directly from other authorities; and it so happens, moreover, that Jacobs's opinion in these respects is supported by that of other scholars in Germany. In the case of "Ayıs, "Iois, and aμvos, he adopts an accentuation different indeed from that of Passow, but then he has for "Ayis the authority of Schneider, the well known editor of Xenophon; for "Ios, the authority of Bähr, who has given us the best text of Herodotus; and for pvos, that of Riemer, in his Greek and German Lexicon. The blundering reviewer in the North American, however, not knowing any better, and merely perceiving that the accentuation of these three words in Jacobs differs from that of Passow, takes them all for so many typographical errors, and talks forsooth of their being corrected in the Boston Lexicon! And yet this man calls himself a critic in

Greek, and a judge of Greek accentuation!

This brings us to the question respecting the two Lexicons themselves, where the reviewer sings so loudly his paæan of triumph. He is certain, for example, that the New-York Lexicon must have been all filched from the Boston one, because, in column after column of the two Lexicons, great part is identically the same. The degree of modest assurance requisite for making such a charge, is difficult to be calculated. The Boston Lexicon is, from beginning to end, mostly an abridgment of Donnegan's; and Donnegan's, as all know, is only a translation from the German work of Passow. Mr. Drisler's Lexicon is compiled from Passow, from Donnegan, from Scapula, from Planche, from Crusius, and many more beside. And yet, whenever the New-York and Boston Lexicons resemble each other, as they undoubtedly often will, since they are drawn in part from the same sources, our Boston friends walk up very coolly and complain of being robbed. Robbed of what? — of that which never justly belonged to them! But to the proof. The reviewer brings forward three words in which he says the coincidence is precise, and he therefore sagely concludes that they have been pilfered by Mr. ANTHON from the Boston Lexicon. These three words are μakapigw, paλáoow, and paláxn. There is, we are free to confess, a very precise coincidence indeed, in the case of these words; but then it exists between the Boston Lexicon and those which it has itself been plundering. It exists between the Boston Lexicon and Dalzell and Donnegan, and we proceed to prove it to our friend the reviewer, in his own very ingenious way:

THE BOSTON

LEXICON.

DALZELL AND DONNEGAN.

Makapigw, to bless, to pronounce happy, to | Makapigw, to bless, to pronounce happy, tơ deem happy. deem happy.

Madárow, to soften, to appease, to prevail Malácow, to soften, to mollify, to appease, by entreaty.

Μαλάχη (μαλάσσω, from its emollient pro

perties, or the softness of its leaves) the
plant mallows.

to prevail by entreaty.

Μαλάχη, a plant of emollient properties.
Mallows. Th. μαλάσσω.

We rather think that these 'coincidences' are somewhat more 'precise' than those between the Boston Lexicon and the New-York one; and if any one wishes to discover

still more of the same, let him compare the words κῶμος, χορηγός, and χορηγέω, as they occur in Donnegan and in the Lexicon to the Boston work. What renders the whole matter still more amusing, is the air of assurance with which the reviewer lectures Mr. ANTHON for explaining palácow by the word 'mollify,' when this very meaning has the authority of that very Donnegan in its favor, from whom the Boston editors have taken all their borrowed plumes!

To such of our readers as have any taste for arithmetical computation, we will present the question respecting the plagiarism between the two Lexicons in a still more convincing light. The Boston Lexicon contains, in all, one hundred and eighty-one pages; the New-York one, two hundred and thirty-one. Each page of the Boston Lexicon consists of ninety-six lines; in the New-York one, of one hundred and ten lines. Now, what is the result?

And yet the New-York Lexicon is a mere plagiarism from the Boston one! There is another feature, also, which strongly distinguishes the New-York Lexicon from its Boston rival. In the latter, the roots are almost always given without any explanation; in the former they are constantly explained. The reviewer boasts, that the Lexicon to the Boston 'Reader' was the first that gave the roots of words. Of what possible value, however, are mere roots to a young student, without any explanations accompanying them? In preparing a Lexicon, the difficulty consists, not in giving the mere roots, for these may easily be found in other works, ready for our use: but the chief labor is in explaining them, a thing which Passow and Donnegan seldom do; and a task in which Mr. Drisler has displayed great skill and ability. This single circumstance alone renders, in fact, his Lexicon immeasurably superior to the other. Speaking of Lexicons, reminds us here of another amusing charge against the 'Reader' of Mr. ANTHON; in relation, namely, to the verb dv0iw. A few words will satisfactorily explain this (as the reviewer imagines) most inexplicable circumstance. While Mr. ANTHON was engaged upon the notes, and before he had made his emendations in the text, Mr. DRISLER had read over the whole of the text, in order to form a Lexicon ; and consequently had marked dveéw for insertion, since venos is the ordinary reading. As Mr. ANTHON proceeded in his commentary, he kept noting down the alterations made by him in the text, and, at the close of his labors, handed them to Mr. Drisler, for insertion in the Lexicon. In the number of these new readings was voice, and avlígo was accordingly inserted in its proper place; but avoéw could not be omitted without reading again the whole of the text to ascertain that it occurred no where else. We crave the patience of our readers for only a few moments more, while we discuss the question of plagiarism that has been brought against Mr. ANTHON's notes. These notes, says the reviewer, closely resemble many of the notes in the Boston 'Reader.' So they do; and they would have resembled them still more closely, if the Boston editors had known a little more of the German. The reviewer most certainly, even with all his powers of assurance, will not go quite so far as to say that the editors of the Boston 'Reader' wrote the notes of Professor Jacobs! Our readers must understand, that Mr. Jacobs appended to his German work a collection of notes, by no means so full as we could wish them to be, nor quite so rich a 'mine' as the reviewer is pleased to call them, yet copious enough for all the purposes of German drilling, wherein so much is imparted by means of oral instruction. These notes Mr. ANTHON, wherever he thought them of value, translated, and introduced into his commentary. These same notes have been taken by the Boston editors, and added to their own volume; and thus it happens that occasionally the notes in the two Readers bear a kind of resemblance to each other. This the sapient reviewer considers a clear proof of plagiarism; but it so happens, that

from this very circumstance we are able to draw a proof of the unfitness of the Boston editors for the task on which they have entered. Their knowledge of German is such as would disgrace even a school-boy. They translate die Nomaden der Libyer, 'the Nomades of Libya;' they make du bist gegeisselt worden, signify 'thou wert whipped; they assign to the verb verkaufen the meaning of to 'buy;' they translate das Gebiet von Miletus, 'the empire of Miletus;' they make Jacobs say, in effect, that all the slave-holders throughout Greece were members of the Stoic sect; and they show in a variety of other curious ways their knowledge of German. All which, no doubt, has elicited the high admiration which the reviewer expresses for their notes. We may hence infer, also, that the reviewer's own acquaintance with German is as profound as his knowledge of the rules of Greek accentuation!

But, says the reviewer, the notes of Mr. ANTHON are pedantic and cumbersome, and are loaded with useless and misapplied erudition. And yet it is better, we think, to write notes, the only sin in which is their pedantry and heaviness, than 'pithy' annotations, decked with such graceful flowerets as these; that, in undev, for example, un is strengthened by the addition of dev; that dλíyov means 'long,' and that roλúv signifies ' short;' that Æsop, the fabulist, lived only fifty-seven years before our era, and that, consequently, what Herodotus tells us about him is a piece of pedantry and a fib; that the Parthenon at Athens was at the bottom of the Acropolis; and that the Corycian cave, near Delphi, was removed to Cilicia, and abounded in saffron; that there were two Hectors present at the siege of Troy, and that one beheld from the ramparts the other fighting with Achilles! These are beauties, of course, to which Mr. ANTHON could never aspire, and which are only discoverable by those who carry 'pocket editions' about with them, wherein are seen neither 'notes, nor the shadows of notes,' and who 'read Homer and Sophocles as their country men always read them!' What hopes of success can the lumbering series of Mr. ANTHON entertain, when brought into collision with the graceful scholarship of this gifted race of men; who inform us, in their works, that Lucian wrote in Latin, as did also the Stagirite, and the famous law-giver of Athens; that Themistocles killed all the Persians who escaped with Xerxes from Greece, and that Cicero sent his son to a Greek university; that Cato stabbed himself in the city of Attica, and that the gardens of Lucullus still exist, and vie in beauty even with those of kings; that Magna Græcia was situate near the kingdom of Naples, and that Messene was the name of a city in Italy; that the war of the Seven against Thebes was only a civil contest among the Thebans themselves, and that the Republic of Plato had an actual existence; that the treatise of Cicero de Republica is burnt, and that the metres in Terence are nothing but Iambics; that the scena of the ancient theatres was in a tent or arbor, made of branches and leaves, and that the satyric dramas of the ancients were mere satirical compositions; that the ordinary class of arts are painting and statuary, and that the highest class of arts are war, mathematics and medicine; that in heroic poetry the Greeks had only Homer and Hesiod, and that their only lyric bards were Pindar and Anacreon; that in comedy they had no other writers but Menander and Aristophanes, and in tragedy no other poets but Sophocles and Euripides! It is worth while to publish the classic writers, and disseminate information such as this. It is worth while to make use of 'pocket editions,' unsullied by a 'note, or even the shadow of a note,' and elicit from their pages such stupendous discoveries. They who live in glass houses ought never to engage in the dangerous pastime of throwing stones about them at random; and they who write such trash as that which we have just been describing, ought not to be too hasty in condemning the notes of their neighbors.

But we have not done yet. The reviewer pretends to find fault with one or two of Mr. ANTHON's translations, and in particular makes himself very merry about an explanation given to àpévres. As far as we can understand his meaning, for in the joy of the moment he does not express himself very intelligibly, he seems to be of opinion, that the verb dpínu never means 'to neglect,' or 'abandon,' but always denotes 'to throw

from one,' and that too with a fixed or settled design; and he gives three luminous examples to illustrate his doctrine; of a man, mentioned by Homer, who, on one occasion, threw a discus; of another man, who, at another time, threw himself into a river; and of the soldiers of a Roman commander, who threw fire, early one morning, at the ramparts of the foe. We have here, in all likelihood, three specimens of that rare kind of learning, which he picked up at his college, when he studied 'proprio marte,' and 'with severe toil' from 'pocket editions' of the classics, unsullied by 'notes, or even the shadows of notes,' and when he 'read Homer and Sophocles just as their countrymen had read them.' But what did he do with this passage in his Sophocles, μηδὲ τοῦτ ̓ ἀφῇς, ' Send and do not neglect this?" Did he render it, as in duty bound, 'Send and do not fling this?" Or how did he understand that other passage, in the 'pocket edition' of his Aristophanes, where the man tells his servant not to mind the little pots and other utensils in the kitchen? Did he suppose the master meant that the domestic should fling them at his head?

πέμψον

Our readers, probably, are by this time very curious to know what has called forth all this display of learning on the part of the reviewer. The history of the affair is simply this. In one of the extracts that occur in the 'Reader,' mention is made of the Pyrenees, and an account is given of the way in which their name is said to have originated. The story says, that the forests on this mountain-range were once consumed by fire, and it adds that the fire was communicated by some shepherds. Mr. ANTHON understands the Greek to mean, that the conflagration originated in carelessness, and he condemns the common mode of translating the passage, which makes the shepherds to have flung fire purposely into the woods, and the source of which is to be found in the Latin translation of Rhodomann. The reviewer cannot endure this with any kind of patience. He comes to the sage conclusion that Rhodomann was actually 'somebody,' an inference which all, we think, will very readily allow; and he then enters into a warm defence of that scholar's version of the Greek. All this is very handsome on his part, and remarkably disinterested, since these same 'accomplished Hellenists' to whom Rhodomann belongs, and who have left us Latin translations of the ancient Greek writers, are the very individuals, of all others, whom more modern scholars, that use 'pocket editions' of the classics, unsullied by a note, hold in open and unmeasured contempt. Now it happens, that our friend the reviewer could not for the life of him perceive, that dpínu, beside its primitive meaning, 'to send away,' had a variety of other meanings, all deduced from this, among which those of 'to forsake,' 'abandon,' ' neglect,' etc., were given by every one who had at any time compiled a Lexicon. He had no time to attend to this part of the affair. His whole soul was bent on attacking the 'Reader' of Mr. ANTHON, and, in his eager zeal to accomplish this object, he shuts his eyes, and lays about him to the right and left with the most indiscriminating fury. The consequence is, he hits people whom he did not intend to hit, while those whom he meant to harm step aside and laugh at his antics. He hits his own friends, the Boston editors; for their very Lexicon contains the meanings which we have just been enumerating. It is worth while indeed to have so skilful a champion.

Our readers will perceive, at a glance, that this whole question about the fire on the mountains, is a question of common sense, which any one can discuss for himself, without the aid of either an 'accomplished Hellenist' or a Boston reviewer. If the shepherds, of whom we have been speaking, were blockheads, then they undoubtedly must, as the reviewer and the Boston editors think, have marched up the mountain in grim array, armed each with his fire-brand, and after having, for some time, 'looked Mars' at the woods, as old Eschylus terms it, (one of the writers, by the by, whom our Boston friends kill off,) they must have flung their torches among the trees with the most heroic self-abandonment. The feeling of intense delight that pervaded their bosoms, as they saw the flames curling above the cedars, must have been very like the emotion that came over our friends, the Boston editors, when they read the re