Excerpt from A Complete Greek and English Lexicon of the Poems of Homer and the Homeridæ Composed With Constant Reference to the Illustration of the Domestic, Religious, Political, and Military Condition of the Heroic Age; Containing Also an Explanation of the Most Difficult Passages, and of All Mythological and Geographical Proper Names

Tm: plan upon which the work now offered to the public is composed, will be found delineated in the prefaces of the Author subjoined. Some y since, when the Translator was engaged in making purchases of books in Germany for the library of Marietta College, his attention was directed to the original work of Cnusws, then recently published. It was procured, and upon his return to this country, was for two years used in the discharge of his daily duties in the class-room. This use, which necessarily brought to his notice the manifold defects of the common general Lexicons accessible to American students, when regarded as exponents of the Homeric poems, resulted in a conviction that a translation of Crusius, properly executed, and accompanied with the additions and corrections which a first edition of such a work would almost of course require, could scarcely fail to secure the approbation of teach ers. He was also not without hope, that, through their favor, it might attract the attention of that portion of the students in our colleges and classical schools, who are desirous to read Homer, not as a mere school task, but with a view to understand and feel the poetic beauties, unequalled in uninspired composition, of those immortal rhapsodies, which, bearing a date anterior to the earliest records of profane history, have held, in all subsequent time, and in all nations of civilized men, such undisputed sovereignty in the empire of imagination and taste. The task was undertaken, and when completed, was submitted, without revision, to the inspection of several gentlemen to whose learning and labors the cause of classical literature in the United States is deeply indebted. By their favorable judgment, the Translator was induced to revise the work for the press; and happy indeed may he deem himself in regard to the result of his labors, if a more deliberate examination shall confirm the favorable impression, so kindly expressed to him upon their first rapid and partial inspection of the manuscript.

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