These striking defects might have been avoided-and could only have been so by carefully examining the original authors-which the preface says the Doctor had done! In proof of our assertions, we need only turn over a few pages, and we find,

"ABoari-without noise or struggle, Pind. Nem. 8, 15.' It should be, without a summons or invitation.

"ABouxóλntos,-inconsiderate, not circumspect, Eschyl. Supp. 942.' It should be, disregarded.

̓Αγάζομαι and ἄγαμαι” are not, strictly speaking, to wonder at,' but to admire; and so Schneider and Passow render them, but Donnegan has mistaken bewundern for verwundern.

"'AyaλμαтоQоpéw,-to carry a statue, or as a statue is carried.' It should be, literally, to carry a statue, but generally used metaphorically, Tiva ay. to carry the image of a person in the mind: Philo passim.

"AYEUGTOS does not signify in Xen. Mem., ' inexperienced, unenjoyed, or untried.' It is precisely the same expression and the same meaning as Donnegan had before given, and for which he had quoted as his authority Soph. Ant. 583. The one is ἄγευστος κακῶν, the other ἄγ. τερπνῶν, not having tasted or experienced. Donnegan did not see the distinction between the active and the passive meaning of this word.

'Ayλaia is not at Ody. 17, 244, nor elsewhere, that we have ever heard of, arrogance or insolence.' In that passage it is, festive revelling.

'Ayλzila is not in Theocr. Epig. 1, 4, to decorate with a laurel crown.' The sentence is, The Delphic Rock τοῦτο τοὶ ἀγλάϊσε, made this splendid for thee, produced it to decorate thee,—the literal meaning of the word being to make splendid.

6

Αγνοέω.—Donnegan has translated Il. β. 807, Εκτωρ δ ̓ οὔτι θεᾶς ἔπος ἠγνοίησεν, he attended not to the word of the goddess. And from this passage, and Schneider's translation of it in the supplement to his lexicon, he has given as one of the meanings of ayvośw, not to follow.' Had he examined Homer, and not blindly translated from Schneider, who is frequently much too free in his interpretations, he would have seen that there is no occasion for travelling out of the plain road to find the sense of this passage: it is the common meaning of the word, not to know, not to understand. Hector was not ignorant of what the goddess meant, fully understood it. This interpretation explains the passage intelligibly, and is in perfect accordance with the other lines in which Homer uses it.

As to the second defect which we mentioned, that of giving an unnecessary number of meanings, we may see it exemplified in

Αγήνωρ,

*

Aynvwp, under which we find no less than thirteen (not different meanings, but) different words of interpretation for Homer and Pindar; as thus- most manly, brave, valiant, courageous, noble -Pindar; haughty, arrogant, insolent, daring, rash, headstrong; strong-Ody.; great-Pindar'!!! We pity the unfortunate schoolboy who is expected to form some precise idea of the sense of aynvwg from this heterogeneous mixture of similar and dissimilar meanings. What must he think of the vagueness and inaccuracy of ancient Greek? It is enough to disgust him with it for ever. Of these thirteen interpretations, there is not one which fully and truly expresses the meaning of the word. High-spirited will perhaps come nearest to it, and will suit every passage in the Iliad, and many in the Odyssey; and where, in the latter, it is used in a sense rather vituperative, as applied to the suitors, we may render it by licentious. In Pindar, it is used as the epithet of a high-spirited horse, and thence metaphorically applied to things, as being 'exceedingly (ävav) splendid or magnificent,' e. g. πλοῦτος, μισθός, κόμπος.

Again ayvos is rendered by Donnegan

'meriting worship or veneration: hence, glorious, honourable, as a contest is, Pind.; sacred to the gods, holy as a festival, Ody. 21, 259; not to be approached by the profane, Soph. E. C. 38; undefiled, pure in a physical or moral sense, chaste, virginal, an epithet of Diana and Proserpine, Ody. 11. 385; morally good or irreproach

able.'

Now multiply and subdivide as we will, dyvos can have but two meanings, the first, sacred or holy; the second, free from all moral or physical impurity, i. e. pure and chaste. All beyond this is unnecessary, and can only serve to puzzle rather than explain.

If it were necessary, we might go on with ἁβρός, αγνώμων, ἀστεμ Qns, doTelos, doTinòs, apoßos, &c.† But we have done, and will close

*The origin of this would seem to be, that Donnegan, having too often no precise and definite idea of the meaning of a Greek word, is fearful that, in translating from the German lexicographer, he may omit any of its meanings, and therefore gives every sense and signification which the German words can by possibility bear; in doing which he wanders widely from the meaning of the original Greek. There is a ludicrous instance of his ignorance in "AzonaDsúdw, to sleep separately; to sleep out of one's house-to be fond of sleep-to sleep upon-sleep with another.' Only the two first are legitimate significations; whence the third came we cannot conjecture; the fourth is a false translation of Schneider's über etwas einschlafen, i. e. to fall asleep in the midst of doing a thing: the fifth is a false deduction from Schneider's quotation, ároxádevde tag' avrã, he slept away from his own house―i. e. at the sick person's.— Philostr. Apoll. 8, 7, 14.

It would be wearying ourselves and our readers unnecessarily to make any extracts from, or throw away any criticism on, the latter half of Donnegan's Lexicon ; it has all the imperfections of Schneider's want of arrangement, in addition to those which we have mentioned of the former half.

our

our remarks by confessing that the predominant feeling of our mind, throughout this examination of Donnegan, has been disappointment,-disappointment, that with such materials before him, with such aids as Schneider and Passow might and ought to have been to him, he has not done more; or, rather, has done what he has done so imperfectly; that, setting out on the great principle of the absurdity of tracing the sense of one language through the medium of another into a third, he has been himself guilty of that very absurdity-guilty of translating from the German instead of the Greek, and thus making that the principal which ought to have been only an auxiliary, and hardly deigning to call in, even as auxiliaries, those who ought to have been principals. The consequences are, what must be always the consequences of such an unnatural order of proceeding, inaccuracy, defectiveness, and superfluity. And the sum of all, that which has given the keenest edge to our disappointment, is, that the misfortune must be, we fear, in this case, nearly irremediable-that future editions must increase rather than diminish the evil, for they cannot amend the inherent defects, nor remove faults ingrafted in the very groundwork of this Greek-and-English lexicon. Instead of serving, as we had hoped when we first saw it announced for publication, as a foundation on which to raise a goodly structure of Greek-andEnglish lexicography, it is so innately unsound, that whatever is raised on it must partake largely of its faults. Nothing but its being completely remodelled, and managed on a different plan and in a different manner, will ever make it extensively or permanently useful.

Having thus given an account of the different lexicons placed at the head of our article, and pointed out the merits and defects of each, we must sum up the whole, and endeavour to attain the great object which we have all along kept in view, by giving an outline of such a Greek-and-English lexicon as we would wish to see undertaken, being fully convinced that unless one be formed on this or some very similar plan, it cannot but fail.

We should begin then by saying, that we prefer the alphabetical arrangement of words to the etymological one, where the derivatives are arranged under their primitives. The latter may be the more philosophical, but every one knows that it is most inconvenient, while the former is the only one calculated for general use, and may be so managed-(the roots and the primitives being, for instance, placed in larger characters than the derivatives)as to present almost all the advantages without any of the inconveniences of the former.

It should be an invariable rule in this commencement of a new line of lexicography, never to admit a meaning for which there is

not

not some good and undoubted authority, and to affix to each meaning the authority on which it rests, or the passage from which it is drawn of course, the earliest or best author should be preferred. By setting out on this plan, and regularly adhering to it, we shall be laying the only sure foundation for avoiding errors and mistranslations at first; for discovering and correctiug them when made: and preventing that endless multiplication of meanings, many of them tautologous or false, which now deluge our dictionaries, and only go on increasing with every fresh edition. It would then be seen, at the first glance, what authority there is for any sense; and should the inquirer question the fidelity or skill of the lexicographer, he could satisfy his doubts by referring to the author himself. If it be said, that a lexicon formed on such a plan as this would be too cumbrous and too expensive for general use, we answer, that the plan proposed is the only one calculated for preventing a lexicon becoming too extensive, by excluding everything not absolutely necessary; and that from a work of this kind would be formed, very soon and very easily, abridged editions to suit younger students and all who are willing to rely on the judgment of others, while the greater work would remain for more advanced scholars who think and examine for themselves. Besides, this part of the plan might be so modified, with very little or no injury to the work, or inconvenience to those who use it, that all apprehension of its too great bulk would vanish at once. For instance, in all common and useful meanings, where there can be no doubt, and where the author from whom the authority is taken is in every one's hands, as Homer, Xenophon, &c., a reference to the passage would be sufficient; in all unusual meanings, and where the author is not of every-day use, it would be better to give the example at length.

Every word should have its root attached to it, and, if possible, in such a way that both should be seen at the same glance; and if the quantity be marked, it will be a great additional convenience and advantage. The best general plan which we have seen for combining both these very desirable points is that of Passow. In his work, the root is added in curved brackets immediately after the word; and the quantity of the doubtful vowel or vowels is marked, wherever it is possible, over the word itself—as in Maltby's Thesaurus; but where this is prevented by the accent, it is added at the end of the article in square brackets, as thus :

'Addïos, ô, ǹ, (a priv. and daïos) not hostile, &c. [~~~~] Where the derivation, being doubtful or disputed, is too long to be placed conveniently near the beginning of an article, Passow

has.

has, we think judiciously, reversed the respective situations of the root and quantity, thus:—

Diákovos, ò̟, ǹ, [~~~] a servant, &c.

(The common derivation is dià and κóvis, one who goes in haste through the dust; compare tykovéw: or one who sleeps in the dust and ashes of the hearth, as the lowest hinds did (Odys. xi. 190): or, with a more general idea, one whose occupations necessarily lead him through dust and dirt. But Buttmann, in his Lexilogus, makes it very probable, on prosodiacal grounds, that an old verb, diákw, diýew, whence also diów, lies at the root of this word, which verb had the meaning of, to run, hasten; and that diákropos is not a compound, but a derivation from the same root.)

We think if this outline were filled up according to the rules which we will now enumerate, a lexicon might in time be produced equal to our most sanguine expectations.

The rules, then, which we propose are these:

1st. To give, wherever, and as far as a word will admit of it, its different meanings in chronological order, tracing them from Homer, Hesiod, or the earliest author in which such word or meaning occurs.*

2d. Where there is no decisive change of meaning traceable in the different eras of the language, to give first the primitive or literal sense, whether in an earlier or later author, and then the derivative senses, tracing them from one to the other so as to mark as clearly as possible their connexion with the primitive aud with each other.

3d. To notice whether a word has varied in its construction in different authors, or in different periods of the language.

4th. To mark where a word is a dialectic variety, and whether

* Observe, we say, 'whenever a word will admit of this.' We are aware that if we were to attempt to explain the senses of every word in any language by following universally and systematically the chronological order of its appearances in books, we should be frequently led into the most glaring absurdities. Numerous instances of this may be seen in the English Dictionary which forms part of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, where this system is blindly followed, by a diligent, and, in many other respects, praiseworthy writer, in tracing the English language from the earliest writers down to the usage of the present day. In Greek, these absurdities might not be of such frequent occurrence, on account of the three great epochs which stand out so prominently in the history of that language, nor would they be so striking in a dead as in a living tongue; still it would be ridiculous to say that Homer always used every word found in his writings in the primitive or literal sense; and of course instances must often occur of words used figuratively, or in a secondary sense, by earlier writers, and by later authors in their simple or primitive one. In the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, we find, for instance, the first meaning of the word 'embattled,' taken from a line in Chaucer, who employs it as the epithet of a cock's comb-a meaning which common sense tells us is a metaphorical usage, and ought therefore to be preceded by the simple one, whether that be found in Havelok the Dane, or in The Spectator. Passow's whole lexicon is a striking and beautiful illustration of this rule, and of the limits within which it should be restricted.