LIDDELL-AND-SCOTT.
[To TER EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your excellent article on Liddell-and-Scott in the Spectator of October 20th you say "they do not seem to have invited co-operation," and that "the obligation expressed to Veitch for his inestimable Greek Verbs' is not for personal assistance." As an old friend of William Veitch, I am in a position to state, and, if need be, to prove, that his personal assistance was both invited and freely given. In the winter of 1861 Veitch reviewed the lexicon at considerable length, and suggested improvements, while pointing out errors, not only in the articles dealing with " Verbs," but in those dealing with other parts of speech,—adjectives and noun- substantives particularly. On the strength of that review, which appeared in the Edinburgh Courant (then edited by Mr. James Hannay), Dr. Scott invited his co- operation, which was freely given in successive revisions of the lexicon, up to Veitch's death in 1885. In the preface to the edition of 1883 he is thanked for his "labours" as if those had been confined to his treatise on " Greek Verbs." But his " labours" included contributions to the lexicon under nearly every department of lexicography,—contributions for which he received the cordial thanks of Dr. Scott on a visit to him in Edinburgh as well as in private correspondence. Veitch, I may add, took a great pride in the lexicon as in all respects an honour to British and American scholarship. Early and steady use of it he considered as an education in itself. " Quite a gentlemanly book," I have also heard him say of it.
M.D. Edin., LL.D. St. Andrews.
102 Braid Road, Edinburgh.
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