24 JUNE 1893, Page 14

TRANSLATIONS.—The Oresteia of lEschy . tus Translated into English Prose. By Lewis

Campbell. (Methuen and Co,)—Professor Camp- bell is as well qualified as any scholar in this country to translate .tEschylus,—as far, at least, as his knowledge of Greek and hie study of the particular author dealt with are concerned. If he fails, it is in a defective ear for rhythm and an oeoasional slip of taste. His prose is sometimes too prosaic ; whereas, while kept clear of metrical formation, it cannot be too poetical. Never- theless, the student will scarcely find a book that will serve his purpose better than this—Cicero de Orators, I. Translated by C. N. P. Moor, MA. (Same publishers.)—Mr. Moor has had a somewhat easier task to perform, and has accomplished it with considerable success. Both from subject and style this is a book which should attract the general reader. Roman oratory in its early phase is an interesting subject, and there is very little of the smack of translation about Mr. Moor's English.—In the "Classical Translation Library" (Hodder and Stoughton) we have The Odes of Horace, L-II., The Alcestis of Euripides, and Homer's Iliad, XXIL, also translated by R. W. Reynolds, M.A. As far as we have examined them, they are well done, but we do not quite see for whom they are intended. If for the students who have to do with set books—and the selection gives us this im- pression—the arrangement of the text on the one side, and the translation on the other, is not, in our judgment, advantageous. It is a useful thing to read a translation over either before or after an attack upon the passage with lexicon and grammar, perhaps both before and after ; but to have a translation so arranged that it is always at hand while the student is working at the original, does not seem judicious.