short after he had re-modelled the half of his work,-why he published it thus imperfect, may perhaps puzzle the uninitiated; but we have no doubt that the simple fact is,—a second edition was wanted when only the half had been re-written; and we venture to guess that a third edition is now in hand, in which the latter half will one day appear corresponding with the former. In this there would have been nothing to blame, had the preface told us exactly how the matter stood; but it remains for Dr. Donnegan to explain how he dared to talk of his lexicon as being entirely re-modelled,' when, in fact, only one half of the work had been so dealt with!

It would be unnecessary to go into detail through all the improvements and corrections which Donnegan has made in this his second edition. Suffice it to say, that for all of them (and they are really numerous and considerable) he is indebted to Passow; so that, instead of calling the book a second edition of Donnegan's lexicon, we should term the former half of it an abridged translation of Passow, and the latter an abridged translation of Schneider.

But now comes the main question. Has Donnegan made the most of the advantages furnished him either by Schneider or by Passow? we must answer decidedly in the negative. His lexicon is full of inaccuracies and faults, and some of them are so radical that nothing less than an entire and careful examination of the whole, with a constant reference to the original authors, and a re-modelling and re-writing of every article of any length, by a more skilful hand than Donnegan's, can ever thoroughly correct it. The main and constantly recurring faults are

1st. Mis-translations of Schneider's and Passow's German, and a frequent want of precision in giving the exact meaning of a word or of a quotation.

*

2nd. An unnecessary number of meanings, either by the use of many synonymous words, by refining too much on the real meaning, and thus frittering it away, by giving too vague and general an interpretation, or by expressing qualities which may be in the thing signified, but are not in the sense of the word.†

*For instance bagvaxis ought to have some more definite meaning than 'grievous, distressing, Soph. E. C. 1561. The same may be said of Bagúvuos. Again, Eurip. Herc. Fur. 1098, calls arrows, Tigard yxn, winged spears. But this does not justify the German lexicographer, nor his copyist Donnegan, in giving as a meaning of yxos, a weapon in general.

We point to such words as croμos, rendered by Donnegan, 'unpalatable—bitter, acid, tasteless.' These three last interpretations are not the meaning of the word. A thing which is croμos, unpalatable, may be acid or lusciously sweet, or bitter, or sour, or tasteless,-but these qualities, though either of them may exist in the thing signified, are not, therefore, in the word.

These

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,

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

''Aẞovnóλntos,—inconsiderate, not circumspect, Eschyl. Supp. 942.' It should be, disregarded.

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

''AyahμaтoQopέw,—to carry a statue, or as a statue is carried.' It should be, literally, to carry a statue, but generally used metaphorically, Tivà dy. to carry the image of a person in the mind: Philo passim.

기

"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.

Αγνοέω.-Donnegan has translated II. 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 dyvośw, 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,

' Avivwp,* 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 (avav) 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. CE. 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 appos, ayyaw, GOTEL ps, doreTos, dorunos, apoBos, &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 "Azoxadeúdo, 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, àxonádivòs Tug' air, 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,, (a priv. and dïos) 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,