monly do to their authors,) to be well-founded; but how far it is so, you can much better judge than myself. "I am, Sir, &c. J. PICKERING. "Salem, near Boston in Massachusetts. Nov. 15, 1821." This Pamphlet is printed in 4to., and containing as it does 70 pages, it is of too great length for insertion in the Class. Journ. The following extract from it, p. 3., will convey to the readers of this periodical work a sufficient idea of its purport:"I may here remark that I have felt the greater desire to communicate to the Academy the information thus obtained respecting the pronunciation of the Modern Greeks, because it led to a strong conviction in my own mind very different from the opinion I once entertained of it. Adopting the opinion, which was first propagated with success by Erasmus, (who, however, did not adhere to it himself in practice,) I had long supposed their present pronunciation to be grossly corrupt, and wholly different from that of their ancestors. But the attention I have given to the subject, in consequence of my frequent conversations with the two Greeks I have mentioned, and an examination of the controversy, which took place in the age of Erasmus, (which will be more particularly noticed hereafter,) have occasioned a change in my opinion. It now appears to me highly probable, nay almost certain, that the Greeks of the present day pronounce very nearly as their ancestors did as early as the com. mencement of the Christian era, or at least just after that period. As this opinion, however, is contrary to that, which has prevailed among our countrymen, and probably among most members of the society I am now addressing, I have thought it proper to exhibit, as concisely as possible, some of the principal arguments, upon which it is founded. In doing this, I shall make no pretensions to new or original remarks; but shall only attempt to select such facts and observations of the writers on this subject, as appear to be the most important in a general view of the question, and such as may, I hope, incite some persons of more leisure and ability than myself, to prosecute this interesting inquiry." The inaccuracy, into which Mr. Pickering had fallen respecting one of the letters, and which he has candidly corrected in the above letter, shows the extreme caution, which it is proper to use in forming opinions on this subject from personal conversations with modern Greeks. An enlightened friend, to whom I lent the book, returned it with the following remark :"The error in his book appears to me, thinking the ancient pronunciation of Greek to have been uniform. Look at the map of the countries bounding the Mediterranean, and you see merely narrow slips of land with large provinces behind them of civilized and powerful states, speaking other tongues. Necessarily such a tongue must divaricate into endless dialect." The note at the end of the Pamphlet, to which Mr. Pickering alludes in the Letter to me, is this:-"I call it Zonaras' Lexicon after the Editor, Jo. Aug. H. Tittmann, who gives several reasons of some weight for ascribing it to that author. Nor does the circumstance mentioned in his Prolegom. p. 33. affect the probability of his supposition; though the learned Editor seems to be at a loss how to account for it. He observes of one of his Mss. :-'In folio singulari, quod post thecam ad compacturam Cod. pertinet, legitur, Arsenii cujusdam Lexicon Gr. Hinc etiam in Catalogo Nesselii impresso et deinde in Bibliotheca Fabricii sub titulo illo commemoratur, [6, 631. Ed. nov. Nessel. Pt. 4. p. 74.] Sed quæ causa fuerit, cur Arsenio, nescio cui, hoc opus tributum sit, frustra rescire cupio, neque de Arsenio quodam, Grammatico aut Lexici Auctore, mihi quidquam constat.' The source of this blunder in the Ms. (for a blunder it certainly must be,) is, I think, discoverable on examining the Lexicon. The words are all arranged in five classes -masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, verbs, and adverbs, which last class comprehends the other parts of speech. it happens that the first class of words under the letter A, consists of masculine nouns, and it is accordingly entitled 'Aprevixov, which word, being seen at the head of the Ms., would be mistaken by some owner of it for the name of the author. If the work had begun with the class of feminine nouns, (Onλuxòv,) we might perhaps have had Thelycus' Lexicon." This conjecture is perfectly satisfactory. Now Thetford, July, 1822. A LEARNED writer for the Quarterly Review of July, having prepared a paper in which he contends, with considerable erudition, ingenuity, and taste, that there is "reasonable cause of doubt, whether the open vowels in Homer's poetry, which suggested to Bentley the remedy of the Digamma, be really a defect;" is indignantly disappointed, because he meets with nothing about a digamma in a work engaged on a subject totally distinct, namely, an Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad; and he complains, that he "does not find an efficient co-adjutor and co-partner for his undertaking, in the author of the Examination," whom he therefore denounces, as having thrown away "his time, his talents, his philology-in short, his whole book." That is; a gentleman passionately fond of wild-fowl, accepts an invitation to eat venison; and, because he finds no wild-fowl provided for his entertainment, he declares, that his host's venison is not worth the eating. Finding at length that his paper, in spite of all the extension which he has given to it, is still too brief to form a separate publication, our offended critic casts about to see how he can bring it before the learned world; and, instead of sending it to some Classical Repertory, for which it was so well fitted, he has fallen on the ingenious expedient, through a little malversation of office, of hanging it out in his Review on the title-page of the Examination, so as wholly to cover and conceal that work. The work itself, which is formally summoned for reviewal, is dismissed in twenty lines savoring of his disappointment; whilst his own History of the Eolic Digamma, of which he shows no relation whatever to the subject of the Examination, is distended into 30 closely printed pages; exercising, (if we are bound to believe his modesty,) a narcotic influence, both over his own senses, and those of his readers." We might here remark, (we copy the regal style of our censor) on this oblique method of obtruding a subject; and on the surprise, which the substitution of a thing unlooked for, for the thing expected, must naturally produce. As if, (for our comparison here changes,) a gentleman were to invite his friends to eat venison, and nothing were to be served up but varieties of wild-fowl. Although this oblique method, of by-viewing publications, has become so frequent as to have lost much of its strangeness, still we are not become so intirely accustomed to it as not to be surprised, that, when we are invited to an Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad, which is the venison in our comparison, we are only served with an History of the Eolic Digamma, which is the wild-fowl. But, though we shall not dwell on this obliquity, we know not how we can refrain from remarking on the apparent dereliction of critical justice, in citing, as the title of an author's work, that which his title does not bear; and in exhibiting, as his argument, that which he has not proposed as such. The author of the History, has thought fit to fabricate a new and presumptuous title for the Examination, which he has compounded of detached sentences culled from the body of the work; and to fabricate also a new argument, consisting of a corollary deduced by himself from the argument professed. The motive which governed these fabrications is obvious; it was such a motive as would be condemned in a civil court, namely, to bias the jury before the pleadings have commenced, or to strain the evidence before the verdict is delivered. We should condemn such a measure in a civil court; and are our self-erected literary courts freed, by public opinion, from the obligation of those principles by which all other courts are bound? There is always, however, this satisfaction for those who experience such artifices of malversation; that they demonstrate a consciousness of inability in the judge fairly to meet the question before him. This disclosure, though insensible to the party using the artifice, is glaring to every by-stander; and there is nothing which more effectually convinces a plain understanding that a cause is good, than when the party evincing hostility to it does not hazard an attempt to show that it is bad, but endeavours to conceal his inability to disprove it, under an outward bearing of silence and contempt. The true title of the work cited by the learned By-viewer, is simply this an Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad; and the true argument which it professes to maintain, is simply the Unity of that Argument. The treatise on the Æolic Digamma, however learnedly and ingeniously that subject may be therein treated, will not over-rule, so easily as its author wishes it to be supposed, the powerful and consentient evidences which establish and confirm the other, very different subject-the Unity of the argument of the Iliad. In vain will he endeavor to smother those evidences, by spreading over them the variegated tissue of his own History; he only betrays, by that stratagem, a sense of his inability to grapple with the argument which he shuns; and a desire to act the victor before his readers, without making them the witnesses of his failure. The argument of the Examination still challenges his best abilities. Let him not expect thus to get rid of it; it may militate against some learned prejudices, deeply rooted and partially cherished, but those prejudices will, in the end, be extensively unrooted by it. Let him not so cast up the counter-scores of reasoning, as to exhibit a balance of credit on his own side, which he will find himself obliged to strike off. Instead then of making a demonstration of having thrown his antagonist, let him fairly face it; let him descend into the arena, and make some trial of his strength with it. Quis circum pagos et circum compita pugnax The adversary is soon found; it stands before him, prepared and collected, in all gymnastic guise and attitude: φαῖνε δὲ μηροὺς καλούς τε, μεγάλους τε, φάνεν δέ οἱ εὐρέες ὦμοι, If he cannot discern it in this athletic form, it must be owing to the " complication" of his own views, and not to that which he is pleased to attribute to the arguments of the Examination. In order to frustrate all similar pretensions to a dustless triumph, the Examination has taken the precaution of concentrating, into three pages,' the point and force of its main argument. Let our secure critic, then, adventure the task of encountering his adversary only in those three pages; which we will presently produce to him; before he affects to walk as conqueror over the field of the work. If he can fairly overcome it, we pledge our critical honor, that he shall find in us no symptom of dissatisfaction at his success; for, we are zealous for the argument of the Examination, only because we believe it to be sound and true. The causes of "the innovations projected and carried into effect by modern critics," in the poem of the Iliad, are not correctly or adequately stated to the reader by the Reviewer; indeed, he appears not to have been clearly and perfectly aware of them himself, and on that account it is, that he depreciates the argument of the Examination. The causes of those innovations, are principally two; which the Reviewer does not show. 1. The first cause, was an assumption; that the apparent irre I p. 162-4. |