The Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language naturally suggested an idea of the present work. Proper names from the Greek and Latin form so considerable a part of every cultivated living language, that a Dictionary seems to be imperfect without them. Polite scholars, indeed, are seldom at a loss for the pronunciation of words they so frequently meet with in the learned languages; but there are great numbers of respectable English scholars, who, having only a tincture of classical learning, are much at a loss for a knowledge of this part of it. It is not only the learned professions that require this knowledge, but almost every one above the merely mechanical. The professors of painting, statuary, and music, and those who admire their works - readers of history, politics, poetry - all who converse on subjects ever so little above the vulgar, have so frequent occasion to pronounce these proper names, that whatever tends to render this pronunciation easy must necessarily be acceptable to the Public.<br><br>The proper names in Scripture have still a higher claim to our attention.