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kind of persons who come under bulk of their encyclopædias; and the scope of the book, beginning there is no better reason for it "Murderers, Traitors, Pirates, Muti- than that the Germans are such neers," and so on through a long list readers. However, we are gainto the humble class who are called ing on them, and may in the "Extortioners." This book has by end beat them. When we had no means a scholarly look, and we nothing to show in that shape but never happen to have seen a copy Chambers's Dictionary of Arts and of it in such condition as would Sciences'-the earlier editions in tempt a collector with very mode- two, the later in three folio volrate notions to permit it to range umes these Germans had the with his respectable volumes. The Universal Lexicon,' published by writer of these remarks confesses to Zedler in more than seventy folios; have got a deal of very curious, and, and now Ersch and Gruber, when according to his own notion, valu- finished, will come to some three able information out of this book. hundred volumes. It is a fine exAnd what can be got from it makes emplification of the leisurely nature it the more to be regretted that of the German mind. It was begun such information is not more acces- in 1818, and is now going on with sible than it is. This biographical vigour. We have referred elsedictionary of criminals notices very where to its peculiarity as beginfew who were not British, and opens ning at three parts of the alphabet. up the idea how vast a world of por- A few volumes tumble out every tentous phenomena the conditions year; and the last we have seen of crime in different ages and shows that, instead of becoming exdifferent countries present, and hausted, as long works are apt to how little we know of it all. We be, it becomes richer and fuller as must admit that there is a difficulty here. Crime gets already celebrity enough. If a man has led a humble, stupid, clay-cloddish sort of life without the faintest chance of being noticed beyond his village, are we to make him an illustrious inmate of the house of the immor tals to make him a historical personage because the devil has some day entered into his brutal heart and made him commit a flagrant murder? But we haven't time to sift all the views of this matter.

it goes on. These last volumes are three in number- all given to Greece; and they are close on the point where the first division, ending with letter G, meets the second beginning with letter H. One is inclined to ask whether science will be compelled to stand still in Germany so as to preserve the logical symmetry of this work, and preclude the concluding volumes, issued somewhere about 1868, from contradicting those of 1818?

Of our English encyclopædical literWe have seen that the French ature the history is brief. But little have got the better of us in bio- as there is to say about it, we are graphical dictionaries; and so also not aware that that little has ever have they in complete encyclo- been told. The earliest work of pædias. Even the now old-fash- the kind published in Britain, so ioned 'Encyclopédie Methodique' far as we are aware, is the Dictionis three or four times the size of arium Historicum Geographicum our largest specimens-Rees's and Poeticum,' a folio volume published the Metropolitana This is in ac- in 1660 by Nicholas Lloyd, who cordance with the experience that professes merely to enlarge on the in the production of majestic costly work of a Carolus Stephanus. It books France ever excels us, boast is a very useful guide to the names as we will of our riches. It is of places and persons in old Latin more surprising to find that the books treating on the history or Germans greatly excel us in the topography of the middle ages.

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This is a field in which every little page includes "the principal terms help is valuable. It has not been of arts and sciences." The first thoroughly cultivated, like the clas- English book to bring the natu sical nomenclature, which surely is now completed after Dr. William Smith and his force of assistants have added so much to what Lemprière and others had done. The searcher after the individuality of some place or person encountered in the Chronicle of Marianus or Froissart, knows what it is frantically to turn the pages of all the standard historical dictionaries Bayle, Moreri, Hoffman, Zedler, and the rest-in vain; and if he find it at last in the humble corner occupied by Lloyd, as he sometimes may, he cannot but be grateful.

The next English book of the kind in chronological succession is Jeremy Collier's Dictionary. The first edition-at least the earliest which the present writer is acquainted with was printed in a very portentous folio in 1694, three years before the appearance of Bayle. It was published anony mously, and is not so well known as the edition of 1701, which had the advantage of Bayle's labours. From its title-page, which is a curious-specimen of prolixity, the book, notwithstanding the enormous deal it has to say for itself. appears to merge into an abridged translation of. Moreri. But there is a great deal of curious and valuable matter in it not to be found there. It does, indeed, for British history and the British great families, the same service that Moreri performed for France. Collier, as most people know, was conspicuous in history as a nonjuring bishop; and when contemporary history and biography passed through the hands of such a man, the method in which he discoursed of them would of necessity be of more significance than the compilations of the ordinary compiler.

In these works, science, as we now understand the term, can scarcely be said to have been represented. Thus Collier's title

.

ral and exact sciences under alphabetical discipline, along with history, geography, law, and divinity, was the Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,' by Ephraim Chambers. The publication of the first edition in 1729 must be counted a sort of epoch in this department of literature. It may be questioned if the idea of the enclycopædia-the whole circle of human knowledge in alphabetical order, with a due adjustment of space to importance, and a reference of the several parts to each other has ever been more fully realised than by the editor of this work, who set the example to foreigners as well as to his countrymen. The encyclopædia of Dr. Rees, which swelled to forty volumes, was avowedly the dictionary of Chambers come to full growth. The Encyclopædia Britannica' was a child of the same literary parentage. Respectable as is its bulk when appearing for the eighth time, it was at first a smaller book than the Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,' being coerced into the limits of three quarto volumes. In the second edition it allowed itself to swell into ten, with the aid of a writer who was in his day very decidedly the kind of person whom we familiarly call "a character." It is, we rather think, a common belief that all literary compilers are persons of a staid and sedate walk in life, alien to the roystering habits to which certain distinguished men of genius have been addicted. Their work is very systematic and compact, each part fitting exactly to its place and filling it, but going no farther, Hence people suppose that the domestic life of the compiler is something precise and symmetrical, like his work. It is the counterpart to the feeling one has in a well-executed review of troops, that each individual who dresses so perfectly in line is nothing but a red-and-white pattern on the field, and has no more in

work. He took at one time to

part of Edinburgh to assemble, to witness his ascent in an aerial locomotive of his own manufacture. That something amusing would occur, seems to have been an assurance quite sufficient to bring together a large crowd; but there was so little reliance on his success in anything, that although his place of residence at that time was the Abbey of Holyroodhouse-a sanctuary for persecuted debtors-his creditors were quite tranquil on the matter of his chances of escape. He did rise high enough to get a good tumble; but it was fortunately into a corner containing materials for enriching a garden, the softness of which was ample compensation for its uncleanness.. He earned by this feat the nickname of Balloon Tytler, which seems to have fitted his flighty and unsteady character.

dividuality of feeling, passion, and interest in the affairs of the world ballooning, and induced the greater than a square in a carpet. The soldier, however, if we ask about it, has his personal character and history, and, it may be, a strange enough one when brought out; so of the compiler for an alphabetical -he has to "dress" to the order of the alphabet when he appears in public for service, but his private life may be a wild and wayward one. And it would be difficult to find one more strange than that of James Tytler, who has the reputation of having been the maker of the second edition of the Ency. clopædia Britannica.' He is not for one moment to be confounded with the Frazer Tytlers-an eminently respectable race of writers, who never appear except in unexceptionable full-dress, and have the art of communicating its stiffness and formality to everything they touch -even that swearing indecorous madcap Lord Kames is toned down to absolute demureness in the two quartos in which they arrayed him. James Tytler, on the other hand, probably never put on a decent coat in his life. It was lucky for him that he lived in Scotland, otherwise he might have often been amenable to that law protested against by De Quincey as so barbarous, which subjects a man to punishment for sleeping in the open air. So far as he might be said to have a regular settlement, he existed in the village of Duddingston near Edinburgh, renowned as the abode of washerwomen, with one of whom he lodged, finding the inverted tub a very convenient desk to write his articles upon. Like certain primitive hermits, the chief source of his nutriment was grain; but he required that it should be subjected to the process of distillation before it became sufficiently purified to suit his refined stomach. He tried both his head and his hand at almost everything-science, history, metaphysics, poetry, basketmaking, printing, and blacksmith

There is a common prejudice which should be dispersed, that only new works of reference are valuable. One of the advantages of access to the old, is, that being made, as well as their makers could, to correspond to the wants of their own time, they suit also the wants of the historian or other inquirer who wishes as far as he can to live into that time. It is in science, of course, that the latest edition claims the highest amount of superiority over all its predecessors. The person who goes straight to his dictionary for his scientific knowledge, and wants none but the newest and most fashionable, goes, of course, to the last edition of the most esteemed work of reference. But it may hap pen that even in science something is wanted which can be best supplied from the old fountains. If we would put ourselves as nearly as possible in the position of those who beheld the science in any special stage of its growth, it is there only that we can do so. Modern accounts of it are taken

arises from the variations which the names of places have undergone in the revolutions of the human race from the beginning of

from the position of the adept of the existing school, who thinks it perfect, and who paints that of our ignorant and credulous ancestors from his own point of view, totally the world. Some of these, indeed, unconscious that some hundred create difficulties so deep that one years hence his great-grandchildren in science are to treat his own school after the same fashion.

In history and geography it is of eminent advantage to have at hand works of reference of the period about which we are reading. It is not only that they enter into specialties with more freshness, and that they cannot possibly confuse the existing state of matters of their own time with those of subsequent ages, but they are a vast relief to the student in the matter of nomenclature and spelling. There is a source of vexation, and consequently of profane swearing, which especially adheres to geography and topography. Science sweeps past it by the Greek nomenclature, which always enables one to find his way sooner or later to the thing meant. Law also affords etymological helps in hunting down the meaning of a word; and in biography, as a man does not live on century after century, so he is not liable to perpertual shifting of names like countries and cities. There is a kind of torment to which searchers are subject both in biography and topography-the knowing the sound of the name, but not exactly letter by letter how it is spelt. This causes great floundering about, and deterioration of temper, especially when the dubieties are in the initial letters, and deal with any two or more that happen to be far apart-for instance, I and Y. And the irritable race of authors are not the only people who flinch under this torment; for commercial gentlemen, in their researches through directories, almanacs, and shipping-lists, are quite as likely to be perplexed, and not at all more retentive of their temper when they are so.

But the perplexity special to topography is beyond this, and

has no right to expect their imme-
diate settlement by the turning-up
of a word in a gazetteer. Works of
reference can, after all, only deal
with ascertained science; and there
are matters so far from being ascer-
tained, that people of different opi-
nions concerning them write de-
bating books against each other
about them from time to time.
But without going so deep as any
of the great topographical problems,
there are matters often terribly per-
plexing in the reconciliation of the
totally distinct names that apply
to the same place. The differences
that we are familiar with, in refer-
ence to places of eminence, will
give one a notion how difficult it
may be to identify obscure places
by their ancient names.
know that London was known as
Augusta, Paris as Lutetia, and Aix-la-
Chapelle as Aquarum Grana, we can
easily believe that, like revolutions
in the nomenclature of small towns
and provinces, these trip up the
reader, and involve him in difficul-
ties from which he cannot extricate
himself by a brief interview with
the latest gazetteer, as he will find
the street and number of his friend's
residence in the new directory.

When we

It is in such cases of distress

that the dingy folios of Hoffman, Lloyd, Lamartinière, and Moreri often afford the relief not to be obtained from their spruce and conceited representatives of the present day. But there is another source of satisfaction sometimes to be found in preferring the old works of reference to the new. The amount of mere compiling in this kind of literature is almost inconceivable. By compiling is meant the putting into new words or the abridging of what another person has said, without knowing whether it is accurate or not. This is a sort of work that is

and English which has been all merely bold repetition or abridg. ment since the days of Moreri,

at times very useful and very necessary. Are we to expect that the person who gives the life of St. Austin or of Rousseau in half-a-dozen Now Moreri's name is sometimes lines in some compact biographical evil spoken of; for no doubt there dictionary, has read the dozen folios is an abundance of all kinds of blunof the works of the saint, or the ders in that ponderous book of his. hundred quartos left by the sinner? Yet if, in the latest French or It is all the better, perhaps, that he English authorities which boast of should not happen to know any- great accuracy and supremacy of thing whatever about them, as such method, it be the fact, as it often a knowledge may blemish his work is, that the life of some eminent perby disproportion. In the division son has undergone no change except of labor the compiler has his place, that of translation and abridgment, and his work is useful. Mr. Maun- or both, since it appeared under der's little treasuries of knowledge the auspices of Moreri, then we are are extremely useful. Every one bound to say that we would prefer who consults them admires their to take it out of Moreri himself, business-like, systematic structure; old-fashioned, ignorant, and cumand the reason of their excellence brous as he is. And by going to may be traced to the good sense of the old authorities we may have the person, whoever he was, who something better still. If a meedited them, in selecting as his moir was originally written by workmen mere compilers, who had Peter Bayle, and held in possession no acquirements in the matters they the mass of quaint learning and compiled about. curious bitter criticism which he suspended to it in those bulky, well-crammed notes of his, would any one be for a moment contented with some colourless compendium of it made for that latest biographical dictionary, "carefully compiled from the best and most recent authorities, and arranged according to the most approved models"?

But besides taking a date, a spelling of a name, or some general piece of information, from a mere compilation, people like sometimes to read an original piece by one who has reason for what he is writing about. This he will often find in works of reference by going far back. There is many and many a biography in the alphabetical French

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