Notices respeclivg New Books. 385 



Chinese and Latin Dictionary in this manner ; but subsequently 

 changed his plan, and ranged all the words according to the 

 distribution of the Chinese sounds, and according to the order of 

 the letters of our alphabet. 



" The object which I proposed to myself in publishing the 

 present Dictionary behig to facilitate to those who study 

 the language the means of finding the characters, I have pre- 

 ferred adopting the method of the Chinese themselves, being 

 firmly persuaded that they must have pursued the best method, 

 and that which was most conformable to the genius of their 

 language. My own experience, besides, has been my guide, 

 and I have not been able to meet with any otb.er ; for there vvaS" 

 no person except myself, at Paris, acquainted with the Chinese 

 language. I determined, therefore, to compose the Dictionary 

 according to the order of the keys, and not according to the or- 

 der of the tones or sounds ; for the Dictionaries by keys are sim- 

 pler. Besides, it would have been almost impossible to print the 

 Dictionary on the plan of tones: this work would have required 

 considerable depth of research, since at each character we 

 must have been obliged to pass from one kev to another, fre- 

 quently very remote, and to employ a great deal of time after- 

 wards to discover this same character among the great number 

 of those which compose every key; a process so extremely 

 tedious, that it would have retai-ded the printing of the work 

 many years. 



" In the Dictionary by keys, we have only two operations to 

 perform : in order to find any given character, we must refer to 

 the table of keys and to the table of traces. 



" In the Dictionaries upon the system of the order of tones, 

 there are, on the contrary, three operations : we must in the 

 first place coixsult the table of the two hundred and fourteen 

 keys to discover the right key ; secondly, the table of all the 

 characters ranged by keys, in order to have the pronunciation; 

 aad thirdly by the help of this very pronunciation, to look in 

 the body of the Dictionary fur the explanation which we want. 

 To this long and difficult labour a serious inconvenience is an- 

 nexed ; i. e. in the Dictionaries by tones, if by an involuntary 

 lapse of memory a character ha.s been omitted in the table of 

 the characters arranged by the order of keys, it is no longer 

 possible to find it in the body of the Dictionary, although this 

 character be there explained. Father Basil has sometimes made 

 this omission in his Dictionary, and we may easily see how trou- 

 blesome this is for those who'study Chinese. 



" In a word, in the dictionaries by keys, it is sufficient to 

 know the configuration of a character, in order to have the pro- 

 nunciation and signification : in the dictionaries by tones, on 



Vol.44. No. lliy. Nov. 1S14. B b • the 



