Vol. XIVT „ . T -4 



jSq, I Necettf I^itcrature. 2 "J ^ 



timid tyro or the confident master of his craft, to be congratulated, not 

 the less but rather the more heartily than the author, upon the posses- 

 sion of such a hitherto unexampled work as Professor Newton's 

 ' Dictionary ' ; for it is far and away the best book ever written about birds. 

 Lest this judgment be imputed to the personal prejudice of an almost 

 life-long friend of the author, and regarded as panegyric rather than sober 

 statement, it behoves us to define what we mean by that elastic super- 

 lative — "the best." In weighing the merits of any considerable perform- 

 ance, the principle of the greatest good to the greatest number comes up 

 first. A work maj' be of the greatest excellence in a particular way, or for 

 a special purpose ; in which case the good it can possibly do is restricted 

 accordingly — like that mathematical treatise which was said to be so 

 learned that only its author and one other person could have understood 

 it, had the latter not been ignorant of the language in which it was com- 

 posed. This is an instance of the greatest good to the fewest possible 

 number; it is the opposite e.xtreme of a Newton's ' Dictionary ' — a work 

 by which no one who can read English can fail to profit, so be it he have 

 intelligence enough to know Avhat he wants, or what, at any rate, he ought 

 to want to know. It is upon some considerable acquaintance with the 

 literature of ornithology, acquired in the course of forty years, that we 

 declare the present to be the best 'all-round' book we have ever seen ; the 

 one that best answers the purposes of the most readers ; the one which 

 conveys the most information per thousand ems; the one which is freest 

 from misstatements of any sort; the one which is most cautious and con- 

 servative in expression of opinions where opinions may reasonably differ ; 

 the one which is the most keenly critical, yet most eminently just in 

 rendering adverse decisions ; the one which is composed in the plainest 

 and purest English, if we except some of the maturest writings of Huxlev 

 — "that so great a master of the art of exposition"; the one which is 

 the most erudite and the least pedantic; the one of the most distinctivelv 

 academic flavor, j-et most kindly regardful of the limitations of a profauiim 

 valgus. It is a wise, a courteous, a dignified book ; such a fruit of ripe 

 scholarship as almost justifies the Fabian policy Professor Newton is 

 well known to have seldom failed to pursue in cultivating the acquaintance 

 of his printers. One of the ends, among many, which crown this work is 

 the justification of making haste slowly; and another is the perpetual 

 injunction which this 'Dictionary' serves upon a generation of ornitho- 

 logical scientists and sciolists, among neither of which classes of writers 

 is cocksureness a quality to be sought in vain. It is far too masterly a 

 work to be acceptable in all quarters, for various reasons; some of which 

 reasons being, that it accentuates the difference between workmanship 

 and amateurishness; administers a wholesome " corrective to the erroneous 

 impressions commonly conveyed by sciolists posing as instructors"; sets 

 up a standard of excellence which many writers may shrewdly despair of 

 approaching; and thus burns bridges over the great gulf fixed by natural 

 selection between the fit and the unfit to handle the pen. 



