British Museum, 22d -Vovember 1856.
SfR-I read last night, for the first time, at page 1220 of your paper of the 15th instant, the very courteous letter of General Fox, and at the same time, (to my great surprise,) the fastidious hypereriticisms, and the many erroneous corrections, of your reviewer, which follow the General's letter, as a reply to it.
Your reviewer has certainly travelled so far out of the record, (as lawyers would say,) that he himself deserves to be minutely and severely reviewed. I would fain do this ; but as such an undertaking would take up too much of my time, I abstain.
I shall confine myself to the more glaring errors, and beg to inform your reviewer-
15t. That his correction of coin No. 53, "for ATT read ATP (Augustus)," is erroneous. The General has described the coin correctly. ATT stands for:AoirkpEr-rop (Emperor.) 2d. That KO above and MO below on coin No. 10 is correct ; being the beginning of two names of persons. The coin is undoubtedly of Lens, and cannot by any possibility be of Cos, still less of Coos. 3d. The next coin, No. 11, with the "marvellous Hellenism," ETA and OVI, is certainly of Laus, and, like No. 10, bears also the beginning of the names of two magistrates.
4th. The coin Igo. 12, of Metapontum, has for type a grain of corn, or barley, and does not seem to me "very like a vase."
5th. The head on No. 13 1.4 a Greek Bacchus.
I admit that your reviewer hits, with a psetido-modest "diffidence" asked the General to aecide for himself as to the suggestions of your reviewer on the four last coins ; saying, " We have not the faintest notion of measuring ourself against General Fez on numismatics" ; yet he has (very boldly in- deed) measured Aimself by suggesting absurd readings, and wrong classifica- tions of coins, which the General has correctly described and attributed to their proper places.
It is with extreme reluctance that I venture to address these lines to you for insertion in your next number. They might serve as an apology, which seems due to the General, for the numismatic ignorance of the reviewer of the General's valuable and unpretending little book. The reviewer should have remembered the old proverb- " He sutor ultra crepidam," and not have waded so far out of his depth. With many apologies, I remain, Sir, your most obedient servant,
THOMAS BITRGON.
[The writer of the curt and perfectly unpretending note on General Fox's publication, as a passing contrition to the fine arts, in the Spectator of the 8th instant, did not lay claim to any numismatic lore. The single remark on which so much letter-writing has been founded was limited to these words : "-Some inaccuracies in the engraving are adverted to by the author ; nor are the references always exact. 'When the writer was courteously invited by Genera/ Fox to point out the inaccuracies, he did so without the slightest 'wish to enlarge the number" of them. Cases were cited of two distinct kinds-first, inadvertences or misprints in the text ; secondly, discrepancies between the text and the engravings ; in which latter the writer never con- tested General Fox's correctness, but simply noted that the discrepancies were left unexplained. To these were added a few cases where the engrav- ings seemed to suggest a different reading or device ; suggestions which there was no occasion nor intention to press, and which were merely submitted to General Fox's own judgment, with a " diffidence " not "pseudo-modest." They would not have been made if they had been supposed likely to be understood otherwise. But on the first two heads, the candid General, while repelling one or two theories which were not advanced, admits a good -deal-quite as much as the writer had alleged in his note of the 8th of this month.
As to Mr. Burgon's note, the tone in which it is written will be perceived to be very different from that of General Fox's letters, which show that a matter of this kind can be discussed with temper and politeness.]
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