ARTICLE IX.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

1. The Anabasis of Xenophon, chiefly according to the text of L. Dindorf, with notes: for the use of Schools and Colleges. By JOHN J. OWEN, Principal of the Cornelius Institute. Sixth Edition. Leavitt, Trow & Co. New York: 1847.

The Anabasis of Xenophon, with English Notes, critical and explanatory, a Map arranged according to the latest and best Authorities, and a plan of the battle of Cunaxa. By CHARLES ANTHON, LL.D., Jay Professor of the Greek and Latin languages in Columbia College, New York; and Rector of the Grammar School. Harper & Brothers, 1847.

Or Dr. Anthon's merits as a classical scholar it would be superfluous for us, at this time, to speak. His various works have procured him a distinguished reputation, both at home and abroad. His acquaintance with classical literature and classical antiquities, is proved to be, beyond all question, accurate and extensive. Indeed, when there is taken into consideration his indefatigable industry, his ardent devotion to classical learning, and the many years he has so assiduously occupied in its cultivation, we cannot well see how it could be otherwise. He has well earned the high reputation he at present enjoys, both in this country and in England. It is a reputation of which, as Americans, we should be proud, rather than wish, in any way, unjustly to detract from it.

In reference, however, to the work before us, there is ground of complaint, not so much of anything affecting his standing as a scholar or a writer, as of his treatment of others engaged in like pursuits, and who have succeeded in establishing a reputation as fair and as solid as his own,-if not based on works as voluminous or as numerous. Allusion is made to the course he has chosen to take in relation to Mr. Owen, the author of an edition of the Anabasis, which had been in circulation several years, and the title to which we have also prefixed to these remarks. Mr. Owen published the first edition of his Anabasis in 1843. It is well known to have been a work of care and time. The foundation on which he built was his own experimental knowledge of the aid which the student most needed in the study of this work, and of the manner and the places in which it would be required,—a knowledge derived from a long course of practical instruction, accompanied by observations having this very end in view, and therefore, more valuable in forming a useful school book than any quantity of German Commentaries without it. These latter aids, however, he had also extensively employed, and had so combined the information thence derived with his own thorough experience, as to bring out, in the judgment of some of the first scholars among us, one of the most finished classical text-books ever sent from the American press. The author, we are glad to know, notwithstanding the appearance of this competitor, will still have a fair prospect of being rewarded for his faithful labors, in seeing it introduced very extensively into the Academies and Colleges of the land. Indeed, it has been stated with confidence, that wherever it has been examined by teachers, it has, in every instance, been adopted. Mr. Owen, too, seems to have chosen this work as his field of labor, for the purpose, among other reasons, of avoiding collision with any series in which Dr. Anthon had been engaged. He had bestowed more time and labor upon it than can possibly have been given to the rival edition amid the many works in which its author is so constantly, and so rapidly employed.

Now there is, we admit, no law of the land which forbids one literary gentleman from entering upon the same field which has been occupied, and well occupied, by another. It may also be said that there is nothing expressly against such a course in any precise rule or prohibition, as formally laid down by any ethical authority. Yet, unless strong reasons can be assigned for the act, it must seem to every high-minded and conscientious man, who can view it dispassionately, and aside from the distorting mists of self-interest, as not being exactly in unison with the spirit of that golden rule, which is the foundation of all right feeling, and, consequently, of all right action. Indeed we know of instances, in this country (and Mr. Owen, if we mistake THIRD SERIES, VOL. III. No. 4. 12

not, is among them), when one literary gentleman, even after collecting materials and making some progress in editing a classic, has declined proceeding, on learning that another had commenced before him, and advanced still further in the same work; and that, too, when neither had as yet announced their intentions to the public. We repeat, then, that there should be strong reasons in justification of the mere fact of the appearance of the second work, so directly after the publication of the other; even had there been none of those other grounds of complaint to which we shall soon advert. The mere publication of the second, under such circumstances, is an implied censure of the first. It indirectly charges it with being deficient in regard to the purposes for which it was alleged to be produced, and assumes that the public good requires its place to be supplied by something else. The very fact that, in cases like these, such motives are often alleged in prefaces and introductions, shows a deference to that moral sense of the community, which demands a reason, and which will not well endure the notion that literary works should be undertaken on no higher grounds than those which might influence the proprietors of rival omnibuses. Hence we so frequently find authors of this class telling us that their work was intended to supply a great "desideratum," and attempting to show how much the public was suffering for the want of their philanthropic labors.

We do not, therefore, hesitate to say that, in the higher courts of literary and Christian morals, Professor Anthon was wrong in publishing such a work, unless he could assign some such strong justifying reasons as have been mentioned. He perhaps thought that such existed. We will not charge that he did not honestly entertain such an opinion. Others, however, may think differently on this question of fact. It is not the arrival of a new Commentary from Germany, which, after all, may be much inferior in true value to an American edition, or a few corrections on a map, that can justify the attempt to supplant a standard work which has cost another great labor, or can authorize us impliedly to pronounce it unadapted to the wants of the age. These accruing corrections, whether of much or little value, might easily be made in subsequent editions by the editor, who had first fairly occupied the ground. A pure honor, and a pure morality, it may likewise be said, would both require that such ground should be quietly left to him, unless serious defects, about which there could be no doubt, and the imperative wants of classical education de manded that another more learned, and better qualified, should address himself to the needed work. It will not do simply to say, I have a right to offer for sale in the lite rary market what work I please, and others may do the same. Certainly some higher principles should prevail here than those which govern the transfer of stocks, or the purchase and sale of cotton.

But there are more serious grounds of complaint in this case, which we would pre sent with as little offence as possible. In the preface to Dr. Anthon's edition of the Anabasis, there is something more than a negative or implied injustice to Mr. Owen. We maintain with all confidence, and with a knowledge of the coinciding opinions of some of the best scholars in the land, that this gentleman's edition was a highly valuable school book, admirably adapted to the purposes for which it was designed and that no reasons arising from deficiency, or the public wants, required that it should be superseded. If, however, notwithstanding all this, Professor Anthon insists upon his abstract right to publish what book he pleases, he should at least.--with that courtesy which every literary gentleman owes to another of acknowledged standing engaged in the same work, have mentioned him, or made some honorable allusion to him in that part of his preface in which he speaks of other editions. But Prof. Anthon, on the contrary, has seen fit to express himself in a manner, that on reading what he has written, one unacquainted with the facts could hardly fail to get the im pression that there had been no American edition of any standing, or which deserved at all to be taken into the account in the introductory history of the work. Now when we bear in mind the high reputation which Mr. Owen's book had obtained, such a contemptuous undervaluing must appear not only very unjust, but exceedingly absurd and ridiculous. If the competition was regarded as lawful, and as demanded on high grounds of public good, it would have been far better to have made honora ble mention of the competitor. Such a studied silence, we say, is very absurd and ridiculous, because there is intrinsic, as well as extrinsic evidence, that Mr. Owen's book must have been well known to the subsequent editor, and that it was in all probability lying by him on his table, during the time he was compiling his own.

Dr. Anthon, in his preface, gives us a list of the authorities and sources from which his notes were drawn. His alleged reasons for this procedure (so common and so

proper in itself, even had no special reasons been assigned for it) are not a little cu rious; and betray a misgiving which could hardly be conceived of as having any consistent existence, unless he had had some acquaintance with Owen's Anabasis, an acquaintance too great to justify the studied silence and implied contempt, or too little to render at all reasonable, the sensitive apprehension in which he indulges. "I have been thus particular," (he tells us) "in enumerating the sources from which the notes have been drawn, as it is possible that other editions of this work may, in part at least, have been indebted to the same; and in consequence, similarities in the language or substance of the notes may occasionally occur, which may lead to the supposition that I have been appropriating to myself the labors of others." Now why this fear of the charge of plagiarism? It is, we believe, pretty generally admitted among scholars, that in editing editions of the classics, the ordinary remarks of commentators or scholiasts are regarded as common property, on the ground that any competent scholar might and would have made the same, and that they had lost all their originality if they ever had any, centuries ago. A remark about a per and a de, for example, or about the construction of the infinitive with an accusative or a nominative, or about the connexion and dependence of the subjunctive and optative moods, however useful and necessary such observations may be for the studentdoes not require that there should be formally paraded a long catalogue of authorities who have employed the same or similar remarks in reference to the same author. Special or extraordinary observations, which are indeed original, should always be clearly and explicitly credited to their proper sources. A mere general acknowledg ment here, such as is often put into some unnoticed corner of a preface, with nothing else to direct the reader to the originals, will not do. Whether, however, they are of the extraordinary kind, requiring such acknowledgment, every editor's own critical skill and well cultivated sense of literary honor must enable him to judge for himself, suo periculo. Dr. Anthon's strong common sense must show him the propriety of this, and no man understands the reasonableness of such a rule better than himself.

There was, then, no just ground for any of this unusual sensitiveness in respect to the charge of plagiarism. He might have had, wittingly or unwittingly, the substance of one half of all Mr. Owen's notes without being liable to the imputation. Instead of furnishing a reason for this over-caution against being judged from “similarities that might occasionally occur," such resemblances might exist on every page without giving any just cause of suspicion, or any ground, to one who had confidence in his own candor, for even fearing the charge. He must, then, have had some apprehension, not so much of being accused of having directly taken "the substance" of Mr. Owen's notes, with which no one would ever think of charging Dr. Anthon, as of its being thought that he had employed this work, on which so much time and labor had been bestowed, as a guide in the easier perfecting of his own more rapid compilation. By this we mean, a guide as to the difficulties needing elucidation for the scholar, and the special places which might need remark. So far he might lawfully have employed Mr. Owen's book, and thereby have abridged his own labor. Such a conclusion, too, will seem reasonable to any one who will take the pains to collate carefully the two editions. Throughout the entire work, there are pages continuously, and to a considerable extent, with few exceptions, where the same words, phrases, and passages are selected for remark in both. The substance of the notes, too, is very much the same; the new edition being sometimes more full, and in other places more concise than its predecessor, but in a great number of instances, alike to all intents and purposes. This is a coincidence, which, it would seem, could only have its explanation in the supposition previously suggested, that the subsequent editor made his own task easier by using the previous edition as a guide in determining what parts most needed special annotation-instead of carefully and experimentally reading the author through with an eye to that particular purpose, aside from that general perusal which a scholar of Dr. Anthon's standing must be supposed to have bestowed upon it. Now for this, as has been remarked, he had some show of right to use Mr. Owen's edition; that is, on the supposition that the other objections are obviated, and he could, fairly and honorably, under the circumstances, edit the work at all. If this can be admitted, then he not only had a right, but it was his duty, as a faithful editor, to make use of a book of such deservedly high standing. For on what ground should an excellent American edition be shunned, when so much importance is attached to the most trifling aid from Germany? Is it because whatever comes over the Atlantic must necessarily be more learned ?

The whole matter, then, is reduced to the most simple statement: If he did not use the book at all, he neglected his duty as a faithful editor, and betrays an unworthy jealousy; if he did use it, he should have made honorable mention of his fellow countryman and fellow laborer in the same literary brotherhood;—especially as he has taken so much pains to parade his list of other authorities, and tell us how much he was indebted to them. Such a course would have conferred more true honor on Dr. Anthon than any he will ever obtain from his edition of the Anabasis, with all the merits which we most willingly and cheerfully concede to it. In marked contrast, however, with such a procedure, he speaks of the bare possibility of some other American edition presenting some similarity to his own (See page xii of Preface), as though he could not at any time have ascertained that fact in five minutes, even had it possibly been unknown to him. He also expresses his absolute certainty (page ix) that any other American edition-admitting the possibility that there may be some such-must of course be inferior to one which has had the aid of the very latest European authorities-a conclusion which many very good scholars will doubtless regard as being “possibly” a non sequitur.

Among the peculiar advantages of his own work, Dr. Anthon reckons the new geographical knowledge obtained from "Ainsworth's Travels." In reference to this, we simply say, that it is greatly overrated. However valuable and interesting it may be to the general reader, there are but very few passages whose accurate translation into correct English it at all facilitates;-the principal aid which the school-boy needs, and which school commentaries are designed to give him. Every scholar who carefully reads the Anabasis will readily judge of this himself. In respect to the map, of which so much is said, and which is claimed as being so peculiar an advan tage, it is the very same with that prefixed to Mr. Owen's subsequent edition; only that the latter is executed with much more beauty and precision. Such aids, however, as this, do not at all create a necessity for new and elaborate commentaries. It is expected, of course, that former editors will avail themselves of them as they come out, and will incorporate them into subsequent editions of their own works. If on every such occurrence, we must suppose that the public demand a new school book from the beginning, of a much larger size and a much greater cost, and that, on this ground, the latest editor has a right to disparage all previous efforts, our academical text books must all be converted into annuals, or be regarded as utterly unfit for the uses for which they were designed.

In these remarks we are certainly very far from any wish or purpose to disparage the valuable literary labors of Professor Anthon. All success to him as an indefatigable writer, and as a ripe scholar who has conferred honor upon his native land. We have simply aimed to discharge the duty of a faithful reviewer-not so much to defend the reputation of a most deserving scholar who has been unjustly treated (for that we are confident will take care of itself), as to express the regret which we think all scho lars must experience at an act so little in accordance with literary honor and jus tice. To Professor Anthon's work itself, and in regard to its own intrinsic merits, we would, and do, cheerfully award that commendation which it deserves; although after the long course of these remarks on the Preface we cannot speak more in detail. It gives the teacher and the student all the aid they can desire; yet is it in no respect, to say the least, superior to the faithful, learned, elaborate, and well-appreciated work of Mr. Owen.

2. Shakspeare's Plays: With his Life. Illustrated with many hundred Wood Cuts, erecuted by H. W. Hewet, after designs by Kenny Meadows, Harvey, and others. Edited by GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, LL.D. With critical Introductions, Notes, 46original and selected. Harper and Brothers. 3 vols. 8vo.

The editorial talent, the artistic skill, and the business enterprise which have combined to produce an edition of the great Poet of such high literary value, and such elegance of appearance, are more than creditable; they are worthy of special notice and commendation. A more able, or more beautiful work of any kind has seldom been issued from the American press; and to announce it as the most complete and elaborate edition of Shakspeare among us, would not define its merits or its preten sions. Mr. Verplanck's services as editor, have been performed with a fidelity and talent which entitle him to a higher character, and which render the work in no unimportant sense, a new one. It is not only a painstaking collection of the best annotations, suggestions, and expositions which have been, from the earliest times, displayed upon Shakspeare, but embodies much criticism that is original, and we think will be

esteemed learned, acute, and judicious. The editor has evidently spared no research nor labor in performing his functions; and possessing, as he is known to, peculiar aptitude for the work, in his scholarship and talents, his cultivated taste and ardent admiration for his author; and having, moreover, the advantage of the labors of all preceding critics, antiquarians, and artists, it may be fairly taken for granted that the present is a more complete edition of the great Dramatist, both in respect to accuracy of text, and critical and artistic illustration, than any other extant. It would certainly seem, that the stores of antiquarian research, critical expositions, and emendations and illustrative learning could hardly be added to.

A striking and most beautiful feature of the present edition is its profuse pictorial embellishments. Here, the editor has enjoyed peculiar advantages. The labors of all the artists who have lavished their genius to illustrate the general favorite, including particularly those pre-eminent ones, Kenny Meadows and Harvey, were before him, from which to choose the most beautiful and appropriate. The variety, genius, aptness, and artistic elegance of these designs, it would be impossible to describe. They range from grave to gay, from the broadest caricature to the most exquisite conceptions of delicacy and beauty; and executed as they generally are, in a very careful style of wood-engraving, and thrust in at every niche and corner, they add inexpressibly to the real value, as well as to the appearance of the work. Many a thought of the poet finds its best exponent in the artist's happy conception, deepening its impression and illustrating its meaning.

Of Shakspeare's immortal dramas, there never can be but one estimate among all capable of forming one. The greatest of poets in the poet's highest attributes, his transcendant genius will never lose its lustre, nor cease to be worthy of the homage which it has ever received-the spots and blemishes to be detected on its surface, notwithstanding; and it is among the greatest of literary luxuries, that his shining thoughts and exquisite beauties can be studied on pages so fair and attractive as these.

3. Historical and critical Review of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 2d edition. By J. D. MORELL, A. M. 2 vols. 8vo., Robert Carter, To Mr. Morell's work is due the rare praise of performing well a much needed and very difficult office. The history of modern philosophy,―a clear and methodical analysis of the different and conflicting systems into which philosophers and thinkers are divided, there is scarcely a man of reading or thought that does not need. Philosophy has entered so largely into our literature, our language, our moral systems, and into religion itself, that to be ignorant of its different phases is to fail to catch the very spirit of the age. Mr. Morell has presented this history with a completeness and conciseness which indicate entire familiarity with the leading speculative systems of the age, as well as admirable analytic faculties, and a refined and cultivated taste. He first took the time and pains necessary to understand the various schools of philosophy-studying, Reid, and the Scotch philosophy at Glasgow, the systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in Germany, and that of the Eclectic School in France. Thoroughly comprehending them, he has not only fairly presented these systems, but has compared and adjudicated upon them, with the candor of a Christian, and the comprehensiveness and ability of a philosopher. Whether the reader can always sympathize with his own sentiments or not, he will not fail to receive a great benefit from his impartial analyses and his accurate estimates, nor to admire the philanthropic spirit in which both his statements and his criticisms are conceived. The style in which the work is composed, is remarkably pure and beautiful-expressing the thoughts, in the nicest shades, with singular precision, and clothing the dry features of abstract speculations with grace.

Though full of interest and instruction to the student of philosophy, the chief excellence, as well as main design of the work, is the clearness with which it explains the great speculative systems of the age in the language, and to the comprehension of the popular reader. Its publication cannot fail to be useful, and to a large and increasing circle, sufficiently interesting to entitle the enterprise of the publisher to praise.

4. Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, thoroughly revised, and considerably enlarged. By Prof. CHAUNCEY A. GOODRICH, of Yale College. Harper & Brothers.

The modifications of Dr. Webster's original work, made by Dr. Goodrich, his sonin-law, as well as the additional matter introduced into this edition, not only en