PREFACE OF  THE  AMERICAN  EDITOR.
 

  The volume here presented to the American public is one of a series of Diction¬

aries prepared under the editorial supervision of Dr. William Smith, aided by a

number of learned men, and designed to present in an English dress the valuable

historical and archaeological researches of the scholars of Germany.   Eor it is a

fact not to be  denied, that classical  learning has found its  proper  abode in the

latter country, and that whatever of value on these subjects  has appeared in

England for many years past, has been, with a few  honorable exceptions—ran

mantes in gurgite vasto— derived immediately or remotely from  German sources.

For instance, an English " Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge " desires

a "History of Greek Literature;" none but a German can be found competent to

prepare it, and when  death removes him in the midst  of his noble  efforts, a

continuator can not  be found on English soil, and the ablest  history of Greek

literature (as far as it goes) remains a fragment.   Turn over the pages of the most

elaborate and valuable English histories of Greece, and how few names are  there

quoted as authorities out of the limits of the land of antiquarian  research.  Thirl-

wall's and Grote's splendid superstructures rest on  Teutonic foundations.  ' The

text-books used even in the Universities, which claim a Bentley and a Porson

among theif illustrious dead, and where Gaisford still labors in a green old age,

the  Nestor of English scholarship, are  mere reprints from, or based on, German

recensions.  The  University  press  sends forth an  Aristotle,  an ^Eschylus,  a

Sophocles, and what English alumnus of Oxford or Cambridge performs the critical

revision—we read on the title-page the Teutonic names of Bekker, Dindorf, &c.

As in every other department of classical learning English scholarship is indebted

to German labors, so, until  the appearance of the present  series of dictionaries

(mostly the  result of German erudition), she had nothing to put in comparison

with the valuable  classical encyclopaedias of Germany but the miserable compen-

diums of Lempriere and Dymock—compilations in which the errors were  so glaring

and  so absurd, that when the American editor of the present work prepared a

revised edition of Lempriere, pruning away many of its faults, correcting many of

its misstatements, supplying many of its  deficiencies, and introducing to his  coun

trymen the  latest results of German  scholarship,  his work was  immediately

reprinted, and found extensive circulation in England.  Though he had to  work

single-handed, and amid many discouragements  and disadvantages, yet his labors

seemed to meet with  favor abroad, and  this approbation was distinctly manifested

in the fact that his last revision of Lempriere was republished in  its native land in

several different forms and In abridgments.  What he sought to do unaided, and

in the intervals of laborious professional  duties, has now been undertaken on a

more extended scale  by an association of scholars, both English and foreign.  The

increased  attention  paid to this department in  Germany, the recent discoveries

made by  travellers in more through  explorations,  the vast amount of literary