Vol, XIV 
¥857 Recent Literature. 235 
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 may 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 extreme 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 what 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 difter ; 
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 Huxley 
—‘‘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 distinctively 
academic flavor, yet most kindly regardful of the limitations of a profanum 
vulgus. 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. 
