all find a place in a dictionary of a dead language, before it can claim to be perfect. We should first expect to find the word in its most simple, primitive form. Then, if there be several forms under which it appears, as is the case with a great number of words in the Greek language, these various forms must be set down and arranged in the manner, in which they are respectively deduced from one another, and the age ascertained, to which each belongs. If the orthography of the word is questionable, that too deserves consideration. And the quantity of the syllables, where they are doubtful, should also be fixed. We may further expect, that the various inflexions and changes of the word should be given, where they do not strictly conform to the general rules of conjugation or inflexion, so that he, who is acquainted with the grammar, may be able to form the remaining parts without further assistance.

The word itself being thus disposed of, its significations must be enumerated, and in chronological order. We have written monuments of the Greek language out of a period extending through more than two thousand years, during which it was spoken. In this long period the character of many words was essentially changed. In our own times how many significations have been given to words within a few years. Liberal, radical, and many others need an explanation for themselves, suited to the age. What if these words were found in a writer of Queen Elizabeth's time, and translated by a foreigner as they ought. to be, if found in works of the current literature? What absurdity would ensue ! And how many words there are, which in Homer differ in signification from the same in a writer of Attic prose, some centuries later! Thus, to take the first example that offers, anάin means originally deception, cunning; Æschylus uses it of an action, which he praises; and it also came to mean, that which deceives time, and so, a pastime, amusement. Kóouos originally meant order. Thus Homer makes his men κόσμῳ καθίζειν. Pythagoras first used the word to signify the world. Ionins is another word of a similar kind, and the num-. ber might be indefinitely increased. We repeat it; the significations of each word should be chronologically arranged. This will bring into the first place the original and proper meaning of the word, and the abstract, the more general, the metaphorical, may then follow in philosophical order. Nor will it be safe to omit the etymologies; for though they cannot be depended upon as the sole guides to a correct interpretation, they yet point to

the main idea, from which the other significations must be shown to proceed.

The peculiarities of syntax should find a place in an article, designed to be complete. The proverbial expressions are to be enumerated, and even the remarkable cases of ellipsis are not to be omitted.

The times are changed from those, when the language was acquired by oral instruction, and the treasures of Greek learning were inaccessible to any but a few fortunate individuals. Our intention is, not so much to give a history of the dictionaries which have been successively made, as to call attention to the triumvirate of German lexicographers, who have in our days deserved to divide the harvest of applause.

The first Greek and Latin dictionary made in England was the work of Hadrian Junius, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century. In those days scholarship was rare, and a man might play a great part in the world by means of erudition. Junius was a Dutchman by birth, but found employment in England. In 1548 he dedicated his Lexicon to the Protestant king Edward, and his books were accordingly denounced and prohibited at Rome. Shortly after we find him exercising the vocation of a poet, and, to make his peace with the papists, writing an epithalamium on the marriage of the English queen Mary. The unquiet state of England alarmed him, and he fled to the continent, when the king of Denmark invited him to his court. But the Dutchman, liking the climate of Copenhagen little, and his wife liking the Danes less, they took French leave, and came to Haerlem. Here honors were heaped upon him. He became head of the college; was commissioned by the States General to write the history of Holland; and, passing his time in literary labors, indulged himself in delightful visions of immortal renown. But the hostile Spaniards disturbed him in his learned occupations; and he fled from Haerlem. When the city was taken, his library was plundered, and his hopes of eternal fame scattered with his books. After this the air of this world did not agree with him, and he soon died of disappointment, and regret at the loss of his manuscripts and of his prospective immortality. Junius's great work is his Nomenclator Öctilinguis, which Bayle commends as excellent, and which more recently the illustrious Wolf declares to be of value.

We should hardly allude to Henry Stephanus, (Etienne), but to acknowledge the admirable character and vast erudition of

his Thesaurus of the Greek language, and to lament the misfortunes of his earthly pilgrimage. If his Thesaurus is not perfect, it was nearly so for the times; and if we consider that it was made in the infancy of the typographic art, before many Greek authors had been published who have since been brought to light; when the study of etymology was yet but beginning, before the spirit and character of the Greek language were well understood; when it was necessary to choose examples sometimes from manuscripts, and sometimes from incorrect printed copies, which have received essential improvements from the labors of later critics; when the imperfect state of critical learning compelled him often to hazard conjectural emendations, and in an age, when he was obliged himself to collect many of the materials for his work; we cannot but feel a sort of reverence and admiration, as we confess that he has produced a Thesaurus of the Greek language, never yet surpassed, and meriting for its unfortunate author the respect and gratitude of all succeeding scholars. The fact can hardly be explained, except by calling to mind the wonderful family to which he belonged. The son inherited the taste and the collections, the zeal and the manuscripts of his father, his honorable art and his love of learning. In his youth, Henry the First (for these most eminent of printers are, like kings, thus distinguished in literary history) enjoyed the instruction of accomplished scholars, and hardly had he reached his twentieth year, before an edition of Horace, with notes, announced to the world his early proficiency, and gave promise of his future eminence. He must have devoted himself to learning with his whole soul, and through sorrow and adversity remained true to his choice with intense and ardent attachment. Three years of learned investigation were passed under the sky of Italy. England and the Netherlands were also visited before he established himself at Paris. During a part of his life he suffered under the most oppressive and wasting melancholy. To publish his Thesaurus, the preparations for which must have cost incredible labor, required eleven years. And not many had elapsed after its completion, before John Scapula, a man whom he had had in his employ, published a less costly lexicon, which proposed nothing of value, but what was stolen from his master. Our admirable Stephanus, dispirited and in wretched circumstances, passed the latter part of his life without any permanent place of abode, living by turns in Switzerland, France, and Germany, and at

last, when more than seventy years of age, died in a hospital at Lyons, a bankrupt in fortune and in mind.

Such was the melancholy fate of one of the most eminent scholars of his age, and one of the most useful of all time. His merits entitle him to profound and grateful respect; the recollection of his personal and mental sufferings mingles itself with our admiration, and makes us regret that he did not live in an age, when his worth would have ensured him more reputation and prosperity.

It is no part of our object to trace the history of Greek lexicography through all its changes. Scapula took from Stephanus, and was abridged in his turn, in 1654, by Schrevelius. The lexicon of Benedict Hedericus did not appear till 1722, and meanwhile the work of Schrevelius had all the success that it deserved. The world is quit of any further debt to the shade of its author.

Original merit was never claimed for the Lexicon of Hedericus. It was huddled together out of Scapula, a mere alphabetical register of words with borrowed interpretations, which Hedericus himself has been said not always to have understood, and which he has never been accused or suspected of having improved. Yet it so far surpassed that of Schrevelius, that it immediately came into general use on the continent. Patrick, who pretended to have improved it in London, is charged by later critics with having left the old faults quietly in their places, and augmented them with some of his own. In the meantime great progress had been made in criticism. New editions of the ancient authors appeared, to which lists of words were added, and those particularly noticed, which had not been inserted in the Thesaurus of Henry Stephens. Assisted by these works, Ernesti revised the Lexicon of Hedericus, and published an improved edition of it in 1754, and again in 1766. This was the lexicon generally used in Germany till near the close of the last century.

John Augustus Ernesti was a kind of prince among the scholars of his day. Yet greatness did not surprise him in his youth. At thirtyfour years of age he was but the associate director of the classical school in Leipsic, and was fortyfive before he received an appointment in the university as Professor Extraordinarius. Yet by degrees he grew to be a great man in the relations of life, as well as in merit. He was the first professor of theology in Leipsic, prebendary of the cathedral at Meissen,

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decemvir of the university, the founder of a new school in philology and theology, president of a scientific society, the restorer of eloquence, and one who filled the lettered world with his fame,' as some one well says. When Lessing, who was a physician by profession, but also an accurate and persevering scholar, published the Wolfenbüttel fragments, which startled the learned world, Ernesti declared the librarian worthy of a doctorate in theology, and took occasion publicly in a lecture to hold him up as an example and a proof, that a thorough classical scholar is capable of accomplishing anything that he sets about. What a difference is there between that age and ours. Then a good philologian was held to be fit for every thing; but 'We have fallen on evil days,

On evil days and evil tongues have fallen;'

and now there are those who will scarcely allow a Latin and Greek scholar to be good for anything.

The success of the Hederic-Ernesti Lexicon was immense; yet its merits fall far short of the demands of the age. The Latin language did not seem the best adapted to explain the significations of the words; and a different standard of excellence in this department had been established by the criticisms and examples of several scholars in Holland. Various attempts at improvement were made, the most respectable by Haas, till at last a new era was in fact begun by the persevering erudition of John Gottlob Schneider.

He, like Ernesti, was a pupil of the Pforta, a school that has sent forth more heroes in philology, than the Trojan horse ever did in war, and on repairing to the university of Leipsic, he had the benefit of Ernesti's instructions. Schneider had at first to contend against want. At the age of eighteen he began his literary career with notes on Anacreon. A later work gained for him the regard of Heyne, and a place as the amanuensis of Brunck. This he occupied at Strasburg for three years, then lived as professor at Frankfort on the Oder thirty years, and at last found rest and happiness, an honorable competence and a grave, at Breslau, where the last ten years of his life were passed in quiet, which was made doubly agreeable by the cares and privations of his early years. He died in January, 1822. His Lexicon is but one of many monuments of his learning and activity.

Schneider is spoken of as no less amiable in the relations of private life, than eminent in the literary world. There is an air