are taken up in connection with the Iliad. When we have gone through with all these studies, our course is finished. By this time, the Greek has been systematically and thoroughly taught, and we can, with good conscience, dismiss our students to go to the university. But such as desire a more critical study of the language enter the selecta. The studies of the preceding classes having been attended to with chief reference to thoroughness, we now aim at the enlargement of knowledge and of learning; at the practical application of the instruments that have been acquired; at original investigations, and the criticism of the text. For our reading, we have marked out a distinct course in poetry, and another in prose. The former consists of select hymns of Pindar, single plays of Sophocles, Eschylus, and Aristophanes, and, perhaps, Euripides; the latter, of select passages of Herodotus and Thucydides, dialogues of Plato, and orations of Demosthenes, varying every semester. Here, written exercises in Greek are prepared, the object now being to form a Greek style. In the earlier classes, only facility of expression was aimed at; and that is all that can be reasonably expected of those who are to be business men. But a member of the selecta of Weimar has already made up his mind for something higher. The principal exercise consists in preparing a dissertation on any author which one may choose, and in a discussion arising from it, under the supervision of Schulze and myself alternately. * * PASSOW TO THE YOUNGER VOSS, IN HEIDELBERG. Weimar, Sept. 17, 1809. ** Have you been looking into my Musaeus? Have you wiped off any of his stains? That I am continually filing upon him, you may easily infer from the little specimens which I have recently given. I shall not enter upon the principal labor, until I have received your criticisms and corrections. Jacobs has given me some critical observations on the text, and the sturdy Wunderlich is also going through with the text for me. Not much is to be hoped from manuscripts, for all that have been collated are alike in the difficult passages. Still, Bast has promised to examine all the Paris manuscripts of Musaeus, Coluthus, and Tryphiodorus for me. Perhaps he may find something of importance. I should like to know how you read lines 213, 125, and 298. * * * PASSOW TO H. VOSS. Weimar, March 12, 1810. * * * I have just got through with a trifling affair in Latin. Sometime ago, Beck, of Leipsic, requested me to contribute an article to the first volume of his Transactions of the Leipsic Philological Society, which will come out at the Easter fair. While I was hesitating as to what I should send him, it occurred to me, that ever since I came here, about three years ago, I had been interlining my copy of Schneider's Lexicon with words and significations which were here and there wanting, corrections, idioms, and the like. As Ahlwardt had written a Programm, entitled, a Supplement to Schneider's Lexicon, I resolved to examine and see whether I had collected any materials of importance, and, to my surprise, I found, under the letter alpha alone, about one hundred words which were entirely wanting in Schneider. They were mostly from good writers, such as Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Æschylus, Herodotus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Thucydides, and Demosthenes; some of them were from Nonnus, Julius Pollux, Tryphiodorus, Athenaeus, Stobaeus, the Anthology, etc. All these had been noted down, and justified by references to the passages in which they were found. I, therefore, collected together all the notes on new words and forms, about 350 in number, which I found on the first hundred pages of my Schneider, demonstrated the nonentity of some words received in all good faith by him, removed the doubts which he had cast upon others, and sent off my package to Beck, in which I have given evidence, that if I should continue to read the Greek authors twenty years longer, in other words, if I should live so long, I should be able to prepare a better lexicon than Schneider's. Still, I thankfully acknowledge his merits, though his hasty, defective, and unphilosophical manner of execution has, by a long use of his work, been rendered too obvious to me. Either in the second volume of these Transactions, or in a Programm at this gymnasium, I intend to prepare a dissertation De Vitiis Lexicorum Graecorum. I shall prosecute my lexicographical studies without interruption, particularly with reference to completeness of the forms and significations of words, the philosophical development of the latter,-a point to which Schneider appears not to have devoted a thought; to etymology, in which he might have learned very much from Riemer; to prosody, to which Koes alone, in his little Homeric lexicon, has attended, in part; and finally to the age of each word, so far as it can now be demonstrated. Whether I shall ever live to see this infinite number of details reduced to a perfect system, must be left to the decision of Providence. If one should allow himself to be discouraged by such uncertainties, nothing great or noble would ever be accomplished. I present myself to you, therefore, as a future lexicographer; and my work shall be no mere manual, but a great critical work, or nothing. If not called away too soon by death, I can surely leave behind me something useful, which, when I have done, may be given over to the best of my pupils, so that, in the course of time, a complete view of this noble language can be exhibited. PASSOW TO H. VOss. Weimar, May 15, 1810. * I write you, my dear Voss, in a state of painful suspense in regard to an important matter, on which the next two or three years, perhaps my whole life, depends. * The authorities at Dantzic have appointed me associate director, and professor of philology in the gymnasium at Jenkau, under their care, two hours' walk from the city. The offer was such a brilliant one, that I felt it due to myself to take it into consideration. The 1000 rix dollars, which would be a part only of my support, would not tempt me there, although I have to bear in mind that I am no longer alone, and that 400 dollars are little or nothing. It is no pleasant thing to be so abominably pressed on account of these "rascal counters,” as I have to be here, without any property of my own. I sometimes feel as shabby as Al-Hafiz himself. I am now and then subjected to great mortification on this account. It is a villanous thing, that a man, who is in the midst of a work, begun out of pure love for it, must stop and calculate the profits; and it is a poor consolation, that other worthy men have fared no better. Heinse, for example, whose bubbling, boiling letters interest me more than all the elegant cut of Müller, the metaphor, by the way, has run off the track. * * I choose to say nothing of the manner in which our hands are tied here. PASSOW TO H. VOSS. Jenkau, Nov. 30, 1810. On the Scythian coast. * In Berlin I rioted in the enjoyment of literary society. Spalding is the most amiable scholar of my acquaintance. Buttmann is a sterling man, full of the fire, and ready to crush the hardest knot to atoms. Heindorf is indescribably kind, with all the innocent simplicity of a child. I found him almost sick a-bed, at the thought of appearing as a university teacher. Bernhardy's appearance is a little wriggling and confused, but he is running over with genius, vigor, and original humor, a very uncommon character, with a little touch of the Mephistopheles. Uhden and Süvern are men of affairs, full of intellect, and highly cultivated. I also visited Bothe. When I saw the nimble, cheerful, and sportive man, apparently about forty years old, hopping towards me on one leg, I could scarce keep from laughing and weeping at the same time. He spoke with great frankness of his own writings; could enter into every subject; and he so affected me by his cheerful good-nature amid all that is depressing in his circumstances, that I thanked you a thousand times for your lenient review of his Sophocles, a circumstance which seems to have given him pleasure. My acquaintance with the excellent Solger has been gratifying in the highest degree; and I hope it will be of long continuance. How attractive is his repose, the clearness and strength of his comprehensive intellect! At Frankfort on the Oder, I passed a very pleasant evening with Bredow, where I met Schneider, and Herodotus Schulz. Bredow I had known in Weimar, and had highly esteemed him for his straight-forward, solid character. His services in improving the schools of Frankfort will long be remembered with gratitude. Schneider bears a strong resemblance to Knebel; in each a great man has been lost for want of proper concentration. PASSOW TO F. JACOBS. Berlin, May 6, 1815. My first lonely winter, to which I could not look forward without horror, is finally over, and now, like all the past, it seems short, while the future, in its limitless |