The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ancient Classics, by W. Lucas Collins.

“This will be found a most admirable and useful Dictionary by the student, the man of business, or the general inquirer. Its design is to supply a full and complete pronouncing etymological, and explanatory Dictionary of the English language; and, as far as we can judge, in that design it most completely succeeds. It contains an unusual number of scientific names and terms, English phrases, and familiar colloquialisms; this will considerably enhance its value to the general searcher after information. The author seems to us to have planned the Dictionary exceedingly well. The Dictionary words are printed in bold black type, and in single letters, that being the form in which words are usually presented to the reader. Capital letters begin such words only in proper names, and others which are always so printed. They are grouped under a leading word, from which they may be presumed naturally to fall or be formed, or singly follow in alphabetical order—only so, however, when they are derived from the same leading root, and when the alphabetical order may not be materially disturbed. The roots are enclosed within brackets, and for them the works of the best and most recent authorities seem to have been consulted. The meanings are those usually given, but they have been simplified as much as possible. Nothing unnecessary is given; but, in the way of definition, there will be found a vast quantity of new matter. The phonetic spelling of the words has been carefully revised by a Cambridge graduate—Mr Phelp; and Dr Page, the well-known geologist, has attended to the correctness of the various scientific terms in the book. The Dictionary altogether is very complete.”—Greenock Advertiser.

“This Dictionary is admirable. The etymological part especially is good and sound. We have turned to ‘calamity,’ ‘forest,’ ‘poltroon,’ and a number of other crucial words, and find them all derived according to the newest lights. There is nothing about ‘calamus,’ and ‘foris,’ and ‘pollice truncus,’ such as we used in the etymological dictionaries of the old type. The work deserves a place in every English School, whether boys’ or girls’.”—Westminster Review.

“That which is now before us is evidently a work on which enormous pains have been bestowed. The compilation and arrangement give evidence of laborious research and very extensive scholarship. Special care seems to have been bestowed on the pronunciation and etymological derivation, and the ‘root-words’ which are given are most valuable in helping to a knowledge of primary significations. All through the book are evidences of elaborate and conscientious work, and any one who masters the varied contents of this Dictionary will not be far off the attainment of the complete art of ‘writing the English language with propriety,’ in the matter of orthography at any rate.”—Belfast Northern Whig.

“This strikes us as likely to prove a useful and valuable work.... The number of scientific terms given is far beyond what we have noticed in previous works of this kind, and will in great measure render other special dictionaries superfluous. Great care seems also to have been exercised in giving the correct etymology and pronunciation of words. We trust the work may meet with the success it deserves.”—Graphic.

“On the whole, we may characterise Mr Stormonth’s as a really good and valuable Dictionary; and with the typical exceptions we have pointed out, we frankly allow his claim to have laboured earnestly and conscientiously in the production of it.”—Journal of Education.

“I have examined Stormonth’s Dictionary minutely, and again and again with satisfaction on points where other Dictionaries left me hopeless. It is an elaborate and splendid work, and with its great fulness, its grouping of words, and its meanings of phrases, should be the vade mecum of every student. It is a book I would like very much to see in the hands of all my advanced pupils.”—David Campbell, Esq., The Academy, Montrose.

“I am happy to be able to express—and that in the strongest terms of commendation—my opinion of the merits of this Dictionary. Considering the extensive field which it covers, it seems to me a marvel of painstaking labour and general accuracy. With regard to the scientific and technical words so extensively introduced into it, I must say, that in this respect I know no Dictionary that so satisfactorily meets a real and widely felt want in our literature of reference. I have compared it with the large and costly works of Latham, Wedgwood, and others, and find that in the fulness of its details, and the clearness of its definitions, it holds its own even against them. The etymology has been treated throughout with much intelligence, the most distinguished authorities, and the most recent discoveries in philological science having been laid under careful contribution.”—Richard D. Graham, Esq., English Master, College for Daughters of Ministers of the Church of Scotland, and of Professors in the Scottish Universities.

“For clearness of printing, neatness of arrangement, and amount of information, this Dictionary leaves nothing to be desired; while its correctness and condensed form giving all that is necessary with no redundance, will prove of great service to all who want a work of complete and easy reference, without having recourse to a Cyclopedia. In all cases where I have referred to the etymology, I have found it most satisfactory; once or twice after being unable to find a word in another Dictionary, I have met what I wanted in this one.”—John Wingfield, Esq., M.A.

THE SCHOOL ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY AND WORD-BOOK. Combining the advantages of an ordinary Pronouncing School Dictionary and an Etymological Spelling-Book. By the Rev. James Stormonth. Fcap. 8vo, pp. 254, 2s.

“This is mainly an abridgment of Mr Stormonth’s larger Etymological Dictionary, which has already been favourably criticised in ‘The Schoolmaster.’ The Dictionary, which contains every word in ordinary use, is followed up by a carefully prepared list of prefixes and postfixes, with illustrative examples, and a vocabulary of Latin, Greek, and other root-words, followed by derived English words. It will be obvious to every experienced teacher, that these lists may be made available in many ways for imparting a sound knowledge of the English language, and for helping unfortunate pupils over the terrible difficulties of our unsystematic and stubborn orthography. We think this volume will be a valuable addition to the pupil’s store of books, and, if rightly used, will prove a safe and suggestive guide to a sound and thorough knowledge of his native tongue.”—The Schoolmaster.

“For these reasons we always advocate the good old practice of teaching children English to a large extent by means of lists of spellings, all but the most elementary classes learning spellings with ‘meanings.’ Mr Stormonth, in this admirable word-book, has provided the means of carrying out our principle in the higher classes, and of correcting all the inexactness and want of completeness to which the English student of English is liable. His book is an etymological dictionary curtailed and condensed.... As a dictionary the book is very carefully compiled, and much labour has been expended on the task of economising words and space with as little actual loss to the student as possible. The pronunciation is indicated by a neat system of symbols, easily mastered at the outset, and indeed pretty nearly speaking for themselves.”—School Board Chronicle.

“A concise handy-book of this kind was much wanted in schools, for most pocket-dictionaries are by no means reliable guides. Besides the word and its meaning, the pronunciation is given in each case, together with the kindred or root words in other languages. The work seems very complete.”—Educational Times.

“This cheap and careful abridgment of Mr Stormonth’s larger Dictionary, which has met with so cordial a welcome in all quarters, will be received as a boon by all interested in the education of the young.... We heartily endorse its claim to be ‘a thoroughly practical school-book, and fitted for daily use by the pupil in and out of the school-room, in the preparation of the English lessons.’”—Aberdeen Herald.

“The work is admirably adapted for teaching the meanings of words, since after the meanings of the various postfixes have been learnt, the pupil will obtain excellent exercise in the formation of words derived from those given in the Dictionary.”—Mechanics’ Magazine.

“We gladly avail ourselves of this opportunity to recommend the other volumes of this useful series, most of which are executed with discrimination and ability.”—Quarterly Review.

“These Ancient Classics have, without an exception, a twofold value. They are rich in literary interest, and they are rich in social and historical interest. We not only have a faithful presentation of the stamp and quality of the literature which the master-minds of the classical world have bequeathed to the modern world, but we have a series of admirably vivid and graphic pictures of what life at Athens and Rome was. We are not merely taken back over a space of twenty centuries, and placed immediately under the shadow of the Acropolis, or in the very heart of the Forum, but we are at once brought behind the scenes of the old Roman and Athenian existence. As we see how the heroes of this ‘new world which is the old’ plotted, intrigued, and planned; how private ambition and political partisanship were dominant and active motives then as they are now; how the passions and the prejudices which reign supreme now reigned supreme then; above all, as we discover how completely many of what we may have been accustomed to consider our most essentially modern thoughts and sayings have been anticipated by the poets and orators, the philosophers and historians, who drank their inspiration by the banks of Ilissus or on the plains of Tiber, we are prompted to ask whether the advance of some twenty centuries has worked any great change in humanity, and whether, substituting the coat for the toga, the park for the Campus Martius, the Houses of Parliament for the Forum, Cicero might not have been a public man in London as well as an orator in Rome?”—Morning Advertiser.

“It is difficult to estimate too highly the value of such a series as this in giving ‘English readers’ an insight, exact as far as it goes, into those olden times which are so remote and yet to many of us so close. It is in no wise to be looked upon as a rival to the translations which have at no time been brought forth in greater abundance or in greater excellence than in our own day. On the contrary, we should hope that these little volumes would be in many cases but a kind of stepping-stone to the larger works, and would lead many who otherwise would have remained in ignorance of them to turn to the versions of Conington, Worsley, Derby, or Lytton. In any case a reader would come with far greater knowledge, and therefore with far greater enjoyment, to the complete translation, who had first had the ground broken for him by one of these volumes.”—Saturday Review, Jan. 18.

1.—HOMER: THE ILIAD. By the Editor.
2.—HOMER: THE ODYSSEY. By the Editor.
3.—HERODOTUS. By George C. Swayne, M.A.
4.—THE COMMENTARIES OF CÆSAR. By Anthony Trollope.
5.—VIRGIL. By the Editor.
6.—HORACE. By Theodore Martin.
7.—ÆSCHYLUS. By Reginald S. Copleston, B.A.
8.—XENOPHON. By Sir Alexander Grant, Bart., Principal of
the University of Edinburgh.
9.—CICERO. By the Editor.
10.—SOPHOCLES. By Clifton W. Collins, M.A.
11.—PLINY’S LETTERS. By the Rev. Alfred Church, M.A.,
and the Rev. W. J. Brodribb, M.A.
12.—EURIPIDES. BY W. B. Donne.
13.—JUVENAL. By Edward Walford, M.A.
14.—ARISTOPHANES. By the Editor.
15.—HESIOD AND THEOGNIS. By the Rev. J. Davis, M.A.
16.—PLAUTUS AND TERENCE. By the Editor.
17.—TACITUS. By W. B. Donne.
18.—LUCIAN. By the Editor.
19.—PLATO. By Clifton W. Collins, M.A.
20.—THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY. By Lord Neaves.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Said to be an Ionian term—“One who follows a guide.” There are several other interpretations of the name, not necessary to be given here.

[2] Max Müller; Cox’s Tales of Ancient Greece.

[3] Curtius’s Hist. of Greece, i. 80.

[4] Grote, Hist. of Greece, i. 271.

[5] It can hardly be necessary to do more than remind the reader how exquisitely this story is told in Tennyson’s “Œnone.”

[6] “Standing before the castle portal of Mycenæ, even he who knows nothing of Homer must imagine to himself a king like the Homeric Agamemnon, a warlike lord with army and fleet, who maintained relations with Asia, and her wealth of gold and arts.”—Curtius’s Hist. of Greece, i. 145.

[7] Catullus’s Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis (transl. by Theodore Martin).

[8] The legend bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the hero Siegfried, in the German ‘Nibelungen Lied.’ By bathing in the blood of the slain dragon he acquires the same property of invulnerability, with the exception of one spot on his back which had been kept dry by a fallen leaf. And he meets his death, like Achilles, by a wound in that spot, dealt treacherously.

[9] Nat. Hist., xvi. 44.

[10] The mythology of Homer supposes the gods to dwell in an aërial city on Mount Olympus (in the north-east of Thessaly), whose summit was always veiled in cloud, and from which there was imagined to be an opening into the heavens.

[11] Why specially “blameless?” has been sometimes asked. The author of the ‘Mill on the Floss’ suggests that it was because they lived so far off that they had no neighbours to criticise them.

[12] Translations, 1863.

[13] It may be satisfactory to a matter-of-fact reader to know that Eurybates, his attendant, takes care of it. The old Greek bard is much more particular on such points than modern novelists, who make even their heroines take sudden journeys without (apparently) having any chance of carrying with them so much as a sac-de-nuit.

[14] Page 17.

[15] Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome.

[16] Book iii. st. 12.

[17] There is a parallel, probably quite unconscious and therefore a higher testimony to the truth of Homer’s simile, in Kinglake’s vivid description of the charge of Scarlett’s brigade on the Russian cavalry at Balaclava: “As heard on the edge of the Chersonese, a mile and a half towards the west, the collected roar which arose from this thicket of intermixed combatants had the unity of sound which belongs to the moan of a distant sea.”—Kinglake’s Crimea, iv. 174.

[18] The idea is borrowed by Milton in a well-known passage;—

“To nobler sights
Michael from Adam’s eyes the film removed
Which that false fruit, which promised clearer sight,
Had bred; then purged with euphrasy and rue
The visual nerve, for he had much to see.”
—Par. Lost, xi. 411.

[19] There is pretty good authority for considering the whole of this night expedition, which forms a separate book (the tenth) in the division of the poem, as an interpolation. It is a separate lay of an exploit performed by Ulysses and Diomed, and certainly does not in any way affect the action of the poem.

[20] Eustathius, as quoted by Pope.

[21] Madame Dacier’s remarks on this valuation, and Pope’s note upon them, are amusing:—

“I cannot in civility neglect a remark made upon this passage by Madame Dacier, who highly resents the affront put upon her sex by the ancients, who set (it seems) thrice the value upon a tripod as upon a beautiful female slave. Nay, she is afraid, the value of women is not raised even in our days; for she says there are curious persons now living who had rather have a true antique kettle than the finest woman alive. I confess I entirely agree with the lady, and must impute such opinions of the fair sex to want of taste in both ancients and moderns. The reader may remember that these tripods were of no use, but made entirely for show; and consequently the most satirical critick could only say, the woman and tripod ought to have borne an equal value.”

[22] Liter. of Anc. Greece, i. 349.

[23] Short Studies on Great Subjects, ii. 175.

[24] Guido de Colonna.

[25] Gladstone.

[26] See Iliad, p. 143.

[27] Ulysses Homer; or, a Discovery of the True Author of the Iliad and Odyssey. By Constantine Koliades.

[28] B. xiii. 345 (st. 45, Worsley).

[29] Probably the modern Coryphasium.

[30] See Hayman’s Odyssey, I. 118, note.

[31] The Esquimaux adopt the very same stratagem in order to get near the seals. “Sir Edward Beecher, in a dissertation on Esquimaux habits read before the British Association, told a story, that he was once levelling his rifle at a supposed seal, when a shipmate’s well-known voice from within the hide arrested his aim with the words, ‘Don’t shoot—it’s Husky, sir!’”—Hayman’s Odyssey, app. xliii.

[32] Possibly Corfu, if the geography is to be at all identified.

[33] This humorous impersonation of one of the lowest, but certainly the strongest, influences of our common nature, has been made use of by later writers. The Roman poets Virgil and Persius take up Homer’s idea; and Rabelais, closely following the latter, introduces his readers to a certain powerful personage whom he found surrounded by worshippers—“one Master Gaster, the greatest Master of Arts in the world.” [“Gaster” is Homer’s Greek word, which Mr Worsley renders by “appetite,” but which is more literally Englished by the old Scriptural word “belly.”]

[34] The Greek historian Herodotus places a tribe of lotus-eaters, “who live by eating nothing but the fruit of the lotus,” on the coast of Africa somewhere near Tripoli. Pliny and other ancient writers on natural history speak of this fruit as in shape like an olive, with a flavour like that of figs or dates, not only pleasant to eat fresh, but which, when dry, was made into a kind of meal. The English travellers Shaw and Park found (in the close neighbourhood of Herodotus’ lotus-eaters) what they thought to be the true lotus—a shrub bearing “small farinaceous berries, of a yellow colour and delicious taste.” Park says—“An army may very well have been fed with the bread I have tasted made of the meal of the fruit, as is said by Pliny to have been done in Libya.” There is also a water-plant in Egypt mentioned by Herodotus under the name of lotus—probably the Nymphæa lotus of Linnæus.

[35] Tennyson, “The Lotus-Eaters.”

[36] So sensible was Fénélon of this contrast that, in his romance already mentioned, when he describes Calypso’s cave, he thinks it necessary, like a true Frenchman of the days of the great Louis, almost to apologise for the rude simplicity of nature, as hardly befitting so enchanting a personage. There were no statues, he says, no pictures, no painted ceilings, but the roof was set with shells and pebbles, and the want of tapestry was supplied by the tendrils of a vine.

[37] So the Spirit, in Milton’s “Comus,” gives to the brother of the Lady a sure antidote to the spell of the enchanter (himself represented as a son of Circe):—

“Among the rest a small unsightly root,
But of divine effect, he culled me out;
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on’t,
But in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil:
Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;
And yet more med’cinal is it than that Moly
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave.”

[38] The judges of the Dead—Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Æacus.

[39] ‘Faery Queen,’ Book ii. c. 12.

[40] When Adam Bede speaks roughly to his mother, and then tenderly to his dog Gyp, the author thus moralises on his inconsistency: “We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?”

[41] From this maternal ancestor Ulysses might have inherited a large share of the subtlety which distinguished him. Autolycus was the reputed son of Hermes (Mercury)—the god of thieves—and did not in that point disgrace his blood. He was said to have the power of so transforming all stolen property, that the owner could not possibly recognise it. Shakespeare borrows the name, and some of the qualities, for one of his characters in the ‘Winter’s Tale’—“Autolycus, a rogue,” as he stands in the list of dramatis personæ, who professes himself “not naturally honest, but sometimes so by chance.”

[42] Πολλὰ μεταξὺ πέλει κύλικος καὶ χείλεος ἄκρου

[43] The Straits of Gibraltar.

[44] The metaphor is Homer’s, Odyss. xi. 124.

[45] “Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare.”

[46] Shaftesbury’s Characteristics.

[47] Il. x. 150.

[48] Isa. xiii. 16.

[49] Ezra ix. 3.

[50] Jer. ix. 17.

[51] Il. xxiv. 720.

[52] 1 Sam. xxi. 9.

[53] Il. xxiii. 329.

[54] Il. xv. 36. Od. v. 184.

[55] Il. ix. 455.

[56] Cox’s ‘Tales of the Gods and Heroes,’ p. lvii.

[57] Iliad, p. 8. (Paris is said to be the Sanscrit Pani—“the deceiver;” Helen is Saramà—“the Dawn;” and Achilles is the solar hero Aharyu.)

[58] Williams’s ‘Christian Scholar.’