The New Gratylus, the work on which Dr Donaldson’s fame mainly rests, is an attempt to apply the general principles of comparative philology to the Greek language. The book consists of two parts—a general introduction, in which the philosophy of language and the ethnographical affinities of the ancient Greeks are discussed, and a treatise on the grammatical structure and etymology of Greek. It is mainly founded on the comparative grammar of Bopp, but a large part of it is original, and it is but just to the English philologist to observe that the great German’s grammar was not completed till ten years after the first edition of the Cratylus. In the Varronianus, which followed in 1844, the same method is applied to the classification and analysis of Latin and the other Italian dialects. It includes a critical commentary on the remains of old Latin, Umbrian, and Oscan. If we consider the recent birth and rapid strides of philology it is not wonderful that these early essays should have been superseded by the riper labours of such men as Curtius, Schleicher, and Mommsen. Distinguished as Donaldson’s works are by wide and varied learning, much ingenuity, and independence of thought, they are deficient in soberness of judgment, and, most of all, in the ability to distinguish between certain inference and uncertain conjecture. More especially are these defects apparent in the ethnographical theories of the Varronianus. To take a single instance, the origin and affinities of the Etruscan language, problems which have yet to be solved, are stated no less confidently than those of modern French.

Before discussing his other works it is necessary to mention an unfortunate controversy which this book provoked. A charge of plagiarism was brought against the author by the late Professor Key, and a war of pamphlets followed as violent as those which were common in the days of Bentley and Porson. Without attempting to decide on the merits of this dispute, it is enough to state that though the obligations of Donaldson to Key ought in the first instance to have been more explicitly acknowledged, yet the strictures of the latter were needlessly sweeping and aggressive.

We pass on to Donaldson s work as a biblical critic. In 1854 he published his Jashar, or Fragments of original Hebrew songs inserted in the Masoretic text of the Old Testament. The book was written in Latin, as an appeal ad clerum, to the learned world in general, and especially to German theologians. It is an attempt to reconstitute the lost book of Jashar from the remains of old songs and historical records, which, according to the author, are incorporated in the existing text of the Old Testament. Here, too, we notice the same merits and defects as in the Cratylus, the same ingenuity and learning, the same rash and overconfident speculation. The bold views of the author on the nature of inspiration, and the free handling of the sacred text, provoked a storm of theological odium, but the only one of his numerous assailants who deserves mention is Dr Perowne. A full analysis of the book will be found in Smith’s Biblical Dictionary, s. v. “Jashar.”

Of his numerous other works the most important are The Theatre of the Greeks, The History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (a completion of K. O. Müller’s work), an edition of Pindar, and a Hebrew, a Greek, and a Latin Grammar. Among his occasional writings the article “Philology” in the 8th edition of this Encyclopaedia is the most important. Though much of what he wrote has already become obsolete, Donaldson will long be remembered as one of the pioneers of philology in England.