tion, who have not yet gathered all their fame, have attracted favorable notice; and we get nothing better from across the water in the way of novelletta and delineation of society and manners, than the spirited and delicious sketches of Hawthorne and Mrs. Kirkland. Among books of travels, few have been so well received, of late years, as those of Lieutenant Slidell and Mr. Stephens.

It has not yet been the good fortune of our critical life to greet the appearance of a first-rate American poem; and this is the strong point of any who care to make out a case against the literary pretensions of this country. But, though we cannot pretend to match the great English masters of the lyre, an excellent portion of the minor poems of the day belongs to us. Take out three or four living names, and then bid us make our choice between the poetry of the old country and the new, and we are by no means sure that we should not make up our minds to the latter. Bryant, Halleck, Hillhouse, Dana, Longfellow, Sprague, Percival, Willis, and others worthy in different degrees to be named along with them, would furnish out a library with which we could be well content to satisfy such cravings as we have for the productions of contemporaneous genius.

The time for writing our own American history has come, and there has been occasion to notice in our volumes important contributions to that department of literature, such as Wirt's "Life of Patrick Henry," Davis's "Life of Burr,” the biographies of Jay and of Josiah Quincy, Jun., by the sons of those patriots, and that of James Otis, by Mr. Tudor. The Life of Hamilton," still in progress, the full Memoir of Jefferson by Professor Tucker, the collection of Jefferson's papers by his grandson, and the recent publication, by Mr. Gilpin, of the papers of Mr. Madison, belong to the same period. But the noblest literary monuments yet erected to men of the Revolution, are the two magnificent works of Mr. Sparks, the Lives and Writings of Washington and of Franklin. Twenty-two years ago, we ventured diffidently to suggest our wish to see a splendid edition of the writings of Washington, as perfect as the arts can make it, published as a sort of monument to his memory." That wish has been gratified in the amplest manner, in a work which cannot fail to carry the name of its editor down to posterity, along with that

*See North American Review, Vol. VII. p. 323.

of the illustrious subject of his labors. The kindred service, which Mr. Sparks, with his singular industry and good judgment in investigation and selection, and ability as a writer, has still more recently rendered to the fame of Franklin, was little indeed anticipated by us, when, in connexion with the remark just now quoted, we congratulated ourselves on the possession of what we then supposed would continue to be the standard edition of the works of that extraordinary man.

Our readers need not be reminded of the further valuable services rendered by Mr. Sparks, in his chosen department of study, by his lives of Morris and of Ledyard, the ten volumes of his "American Biography," and his edition of the Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution; nor of the enviable fame established by Mr. Bancroft, by his not yet finished history of the American Colonies and States.

Nor have American historians confined their attention to the annals of their own country. Witness Mr. Wheaton's elaborate "History of the Northmen," and Mr. Prescott's "History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," a work than which the age has certainly produced none more sure of bequeathing its author's name to the admiration of future times.

As the American writers of the five finished lustres of our own literary life have successively presented themselves before the public, we have constantly used our poor endeavour to do justice to their merits. And we are tempted to add the expression of our consciousness of never having designed to treat the claims of any of them in any other than a frank, fair, and generous spirit. We should have been faithless to our undertaking, if we had not freely censured, wherever we conceived censure to be due. It is only by such discrimination, that we could accomplish our wish of rendering some service to the rising literature of the country; but the office of commendation is that, in which we have always found our highest pleasure. We see cause to congratulate ourselves, in the retrospect of our labors, on the prompt encouragement with which it has often been our happiness to welcome the first exhibitions of talents, matured since into useful exercise and wide fame. We congratulate ourselves on the firm resistance which these pages have always opposed to the encroachment of any and every form of a sectional and sectarian spirit, and on the pertinacity with which they have kept aloof from the strifes of political party. In the view of some of the

newspaper writers, this last feature of our policy is a sin, and they have not failed, from year to year, to visit it with their rebuke. But with their good leave, or even without it, we believe we shall keep on our accustomed course in this respect. Party conflicts are excellent things in their way. But there is room in the world for those who do not engage in them. And, profitable as they are, science, literature, art, and other high interests of humanity have also their claims, and claims which are best met by the concurrent devotion of minds which may divide upon the question, who ought to be the next President.

ART. XI.-CRITICAL NOTICES.
E. E, Hale

1.-A Reply to the Attack on Anthon's Greek Reader, in the North American Review for July, 1840. The Knickerbocker. Extra. New York. 8vo. pp. 11.

We have been credibly assured, that, in some quarters in New York, this fanfaronnade passes for a sufficient answer to our recent strictures on Professor Anthon's discreditable work. We should not have thought it, and we can only say, The more is the pity. Great part of the eleven pages has no reference whatever to our criticism, and, so far as this is touched upon, no particular of the argument offered by us is invalidated. Indeed the critic scarcely appears to have proposed to himself any thing more, than by raising a cloud of words to hide the points in question.

In our recent article we found ourselves compelled to charge Dr. Anthon with plagiarism. We proved this charge in different ways.

First, we showed that after professing in his Preface an intention of taking "those selections from the German work [of Jacobs], which had been adopted in the more respectable portion of our Classical schools," he had made the same additions to those selections, which had been before made by the Boston editors. His champion replies to this, only by saying that if the articles were not in Jacobs's work, they were in Dalzel's "Græca Minora"! What then? Dr. Anthon made no allusion to Dalzel's book, except to speak of "the days of the Græca Minora" as one of the lowest periods of American scholarship, He stated categorically, that his new edition consisted of

those extracts from Jacobs which had before been in use. This statement was the foundation of our argument on that point, and it is carefully kept out of view by the writer in the "Knickerbocker."

We further supported the accusation of plagiarism by a reference to the accentuation of the two editions. A number of words in the Boston edition bore different accents in the lexicon from those attached to them in the text. On referring to the New York edition, the same inconsistency was found. We stated this, and still state it, as a positive proof that one edition was borrowed from the other; a positive, unequivocal proof, we say, because it occurs in a large number of instances. The critic in the "Knickerbocker" replies, that the New York text and lexicon were prepared by different persons; that Dr. Anthon corrected the text, while the lexicon was compiled by Mr. Drisler. Passing by for the present the grave circumstance, that, in a book published with Dr. Anthon's name, and recommended by his classical reputation, so important a part as this lexicon is should be compiled entirely, as it appears, by another hand, we half fear we shall affront our readers' understandings, by asking them to observe, that this fact does not at all concern our argument. Certain remarkable inconsistencies occur between the text and lexicon of the Boston edition; the same are found in that published in New York; and from such facts there can be but one inference, which is not changed by the circumstance that the text and the lexicon were the work of different hands. If, as the writer in the "Knickerbocker" asserts, Dr. Anthon edited the text and Mr. Drisler the lexicon, there is no more to be said than that Dr. Anthon copied from the Boston text, and Mr. Drisler from the Boston lexicon.

Under pretence of a general answer to this branch of our argument, and to the fact, which we stated, that almost all the Boston errors in accent were copied into the New York edition, a deal of verbiage is put together on the subject of Greek accentuation. In mentioning the inconsistencies between the accentuation of the text and that of the lexicon, we spoke of the accents in the former as erroneous, in certain instances, while we called the latter correct. To this the New York critic is at pains to say, that questions of accent excite difference of opinion among German scholars, and then he goes on to charge us with ignorance in condemning accentuations, which, as he attempts to show, are supported by some authorities. What if they are? After duly weighing authorities, we presumed to say that one accentuation was correct, and the other incorrect. If our censor's remarks mean any thing, they show, that, in his zeal to submit to European criticism, he would not take the No. 109.

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responsibility of deciding, but would sustain both accentuations as of good authority. This is the best defence he can make in the case for his discordant clients, Messrs. Anthon and Drisler.

Even if he were able to appeal to the highest authority for an accentuation pronounced by us erroneous, our argument from the fact that the inconsistencies of the one edition are found in the other would be no less strong. Whether the Boston text is wrong and the lexicon right, as we stated, or both are right, as he states, it is very evident that the New York editors carefully copied both. Allowing him his own way, it remains palpable to sense, that the New York and Boston editions have in these cases exactly the same reading, and that is what we asserted. Nay, such a charge as we made would be only strengthened by the existence of a question respecting the correctness or incorrectness of an accentuation. If there

were the great doubt and difference of opinion which is pretended, it would be only the more wonderful that the Boston and New York editors should have stumbled on the same inconsistencies.

Really, however, our critic, in this instance, has no ground on which to rest; and as on this matter of accentuation he accuses us of ignorance, which is a thing very definite and provable, and justly chargeable, it would seem, in the present instance, somewhere, the reader will perhaps pardon us if we go a little into detail. After stating that Jacobs introduced some accentual variations, he says,

"It so happens, moreover, that Jacobs's opinion in this respect is supported by that of other scholars in Germany. In the case of “Ayıs, "Ios, and vos, he adopts an accentuation different indeed from that of Passow, but then he has for "Ays the authority of Schneider, the well known editor of Xenophon; for "Is the authority of Bähr, who has given us the best text of Herodotus; and for uvos 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." p. 6.

The "Knickerbocker," then, we understand, deliberately defends these accents as plausible, on these authorities. Let us see. Jacobs did once make use of them, but he discovered and corrected his own mistake as early as 1827, when he published the tenth edition of his work, and in that and all his subsequent editions the words are given with the accents which we stated to be correct. Riemer's authority is adduced to support uros, but it is by mere force of a typographical error. If the reader will consult his Lexicon, he will find that