Did Charles Anthon Verify a Translation by Joseph Smith?

The canonical 1838 account of Martin Harris's visit to Charles Anthon says,

I went to the city of New York, and presented the characters which had been translated, with the translation thereof, to Professor Charles Anthon, a gentleman celebrated for his literary attainments. Professor Anthon stated that the translation was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. ... He then said to me, ...that if I would bring the plates to him he would translate them. I informed him that part of the plates were sealed, and that I was forbidden to bring them. He replied, "I cannot read a sealed book."

When this account is compared with earlier tellings, important discrepancies emerge. No other early account reports Anthon having said anything about a "sealed book." Nor do other accounts report Harris having taken a translation along with the characters. To the contrary, they seem to strongly imply that no translation had yet been attempted. Take for example Joseph Smith's own 1832 account:

the Lord had shown him [Martin Harris] that he must go to New York City with some of the characters so we proceeded to coppy some of them and he took his Journy to the Eastern Cittys and to the Learned read this I pray thee and the learned said I cannot but if he would bring the blates [plates] they would read it but the Lord forbid it and he returned to me and gave them to me to translate and I said I said [ I ] cannot for I am not learned but the Lord had prepared spetticke spectacles for to read the Book therefore I commenced translating the characters and thus the Prop[h]icy of Isiaah was fulfilled which is written in the 29 chapter concerning the book[.] (EMD 1:30)

Here Joseph commences his translation only after Martin's return. The account of Joseph Knight, Sr. follows basically the same pattern. According to Knight, when Joseph Smith got the plates he was "anxious to git them Translated." Apparently to this end, Joseph drew off some characters and gave them to Harris, who then took them to Mitchill and Anthon. There were, however, some characters Anthon was unable to understand, so he wrote a letter to Joseph Smith asking to see the original. Harris then confessed that the originals could not be delivered because Joseph had been commanded not to show them to anyone, and at this news Anthon tore up the letter. As in the 1832 History, Harris returned home without a translation, and Joseph, "B[e]ing an unlearned man[,] did not know what to Do. then the Lord gave him Power to Translate himself" (EMD 3:15, 17).

Lucy's Preliminary Manuscript substantially agrees with this accounting of events:

[Joseph] was instructed to take off a fac simile of the alphabet Egyptian characters Alphabetically and send them to all the learned men that he could find and ask them for a translation [...] as yet no means had come into his hands of accomplishing the same it. (EMD 1:343-44)

And finally, of course, there is Anthon's own 1834 statement that when Harris came to him "no translation had been furnished at the time" (EMD 4:377-81).

The early Mormon testimonies could perhaps be explained as attempts to fit the story to Isaiah 29:12. This was a decisive factor in their framing the story the way they did. The implication that Joseph did not know at this time that the spectacles could be used for translation, for example, is probably just a bit of creative misremembering. Still, when Anthon's testimony is added to the mix, I'd say the evidence is very good that Martin did not bring a translation with him to New York.  Presumably, if Anthon had verified Smith's translation then much would have been made of it in the earlier accounts.

So, I have to agree with Dan Vogel's approach to these discrepancies. He argues that the 1838 account is an apologetic revision, designed to "provide support for Smith's ability to translate." Since the revision eliminates the points of similarity to Isaiah 29:11, the comment about a "sealed book" is placed on Anthon’s lips in order to re-establish the biblical link (cf. also Making of a Prophet, 115-16).

This was just one of those stories that got a little better with the telling.