The Life and Letters of Barthold George Niebuhr, ed. K. J. Bunsen, with J. Brandis and J. W. Lorbell (New York: Harper, 1854) p. 483, and letter 364 (pp. 501-502), addressed to Savigny, dated 29 April 1827: "You will have heard of the edition of the Byzantine historians, which I am superintending. It is a great delight to me to be able thus to infuse some life into our literary doings; to give employment to young philologists; to give extension, activity, and perfection to typography; to contribute my mite [sic] to the increase of general prosperity...."
Reinsch, op. cit., reports that August Heisenberg, professor of Byzantine literature at Munich, once said of Bekker that he "must have revised the texts 'lying on the sofa with the cigar in his mouth.'" J. B. Bury was even harsher in his assessment, calling the CSHB "the most lamentably feeble production ever given to the world by German scholars of great reputation." See: idem"Introduction", to Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, ed. Bury (London: Methuen, 1897), p. xlix.
"Niebuhr's Edition of the Byzantine Historians"The Foreign Review 1 (1828), p. 575. The anonymous reviewer criticizes Niebuhr, however, for standardizing Byzantine orthography along Classical lines
