CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 323 



tion will take place in i^iigust next, when the other officers of the 

 Institution will be appointed, the rules and regulations by which 

 the society is to be governed adopted and printed, with the names 

 of the subscribers, which are already extremely numerous and daily 

 increasing. Rooms suitable for the museum have been taken, and 

 will speedily be fitted up for the reception of specimens ; and when 

 this infant society is fairly established, we shall have great pleasure 

 in devoting a portion of our pages to recording their proceedings, 

 and giving publicity to the essays and papers of the talented natu- 

 ralists with which that district abounds, who may favour us with 

 the result of their scientific investigations. 



CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



A Dictionary of Terms employed by the French, in Anatomy, Phy~ 



siology, Sfc. ; with their derivations from the Greek a?id Latin ; 



and their Synonyms in the Greek, Latin, French, German, and 



English. By Shirley Palmer, M.D. Part II. London: Long- 



^ man &; Co. Birmingham : Barlow. 1836. 



If there be a labourer in the Campus literarius more neglected 

 than another, it is the lexicographist ; beheld as a mere collector of 

 other men's goods, industry is regarded as his only merit. But a 

 dictionary is susceptible of a higher character than that of a mere 

 conservatory : it is a work in which wisdom, gathered from the 

 records of time, is condensed within a few pages ; giving an exten- 

 sion to knowledge otherwise unattainable, and making every one its 

 possessor by the facility of that attainment. The genius of man 

 elevates the most humble occupation, and gives it an importance 

 unexpected and permanent. The labour of Johnson as a lexicogra- 

 phist raised this department of literature into celebrity ; and while 

 he worked out a new source of national improvement, he added a 

 new lustre to the annals of our literature. The value of a book is 

 not what it will fetch, but what it will communicate ; whether it 

 be momentary amusement, or permanent utility. Works of fiction, 

 poetry, and romance, are dictionaries of their kind ; they record 

 feelings and actions which have had a thousand precedents ; nor 

 can they exhibit anything new beyond the expression of them : but 

 while the universal mind is but the unchangeable reflection of the 

 same image, its desires and propensities will be the same; and 

 those sounds which are the echoes to its own feelings will always 

 be listened to. Thus, the love of fiction, either in prose or 

 verse, is universal ; that of science exclusive and particular. The 

 former is coeval with its cause ; the latter arises out of our wants, 



z2 



