OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : JUNE 4, 1872. 447 



in collating manuscripts in France, England, Germany, and Italy ; and 

 the present generation of classical scholars are, perhaps, too little aware 

 of the debt of gratitude which they owe to this quiet, indefatigable 

 worker. It would be easier to enumerate the Greek authors who were 

 not edited by Bekker than those who were. The shelves of every clas- 

 sical library will soon supply more names than any two other editors 

 could claim ; and the critical apparatus with which his editions of the 

 most important authors were enriched has been of more permanent 

 value than any exegetical commentary. We may mention his editions 

 of Plato (1816, 1817), of Thucydides (1821), of the Attic Orators (Ox- 

 ford, 1822, 1823 ; Berlin, 1823, 1824), of Herodotus (1826), of Aris- 

 tophanes (1829), of Aristotle (Berlin, 1831 - 1836 ; Oxford, 1837)^ 

 and of Homer (1843, Iliad ; 1858, Iliad and Odyssey). We may men- 

 tion, among his editions of Latin authors, those of Livy (1829, 1830) 

 and of Tacitus (1831). In many cases, the labors of Bekker have 

 served, or are still serving, as a basis for later scholars to determine 

 the authentic text. A striking instance of this may be seen in Bekker's 

 later edition of Demosthenes (1854), in which a text is given which 

 differs on every page from that of the Oratores Attici (1823), but 

 which could never have been determined with such certainty without 

 the careful collation of fifteen manuscripts which the earlier work con- 

 tains. It needed the experience of the earlier edition to show Bekker 

 himself the true use of his immense material, and to determine the 

 principles of criticism on which the text of Demosthenes is now by uni- 

 versal consent established with as great certainty as we can ever hope 

 to attain in the text of a classic author. 



Bekker seems never to have distinguished himself as a public lec- 

 turer at Berlin in any degree proportionate to his fame and merit as a 

 scholar. He preferred his more quiet work in the library to giving 

 instruction to classes ; and students who knew him only as a professor 

 (if any such there were) could never have appreciated his profound 

 scholarship and his critical sagacity. His dislike of long commentaries 

 and prolegomena often kept him utterly silent when he alone could have 

 spoken with authority ; and when he broke his rule, and wrote a note 

 or a preface, his brevity was often more tantalizing than his silence. 

 His conversation was marked by the same laconic brevity as his writ- 

 ings ; and the remark of an intimate friend, " Er schweigt in sieben 

 Sprachen," was one of the commonplaces of Berlin society. Notwith- 

 standing his retiring disposition, his company was eagerly sought by the 



