BOOKS.
CLASSICS FOR '111E .AMATBUR..
Gnu= and Latin as school subjects have been roughly handled in recent controversies, but assailants and defenders have always agreed in assuming the supremacy of Greek and Latin literature. For the scholar's whole life is built on the belief that they are supreme, and the " modernist's " whole ease is built on the contention that he himself is not a Philistine. The assumption is therefore made and remains unchallenged. The man who knows nothing of education or of either language is struck by it, and being eager for self-improvement, as we all are since the war, he has begun to ask to see these supreme literatures for himself. Ho has begun to ask for translations, and he is getting them in an endless stream. The " Loeb Classical Library," that admir- able series which is to make all ancient literature " from Homer to the fall of Constantinople " accessible in alternate pages of text and translation, has issued its hundredth volume and announced another dozen for this year. Its great success in days like these is a command to hope. The seven authors translated in the new batch of " Loebs " come from seven different centuries, and extend from Homer to Ausonius. The Odyssey' is now complete, and Plutarch' has advanced one volume. The other five authors are all making a first appearance. Thuoydides,' who is to have four volumes, reaches in this one the end of the Second Book. The translation, which is by an American scholar from Wisconsin University, has been specially written for the series. Now there has been a great tradition of translation from Thucydides in England ever since Thomas Hobbes published his famous and delightful version in 1628, and there are at least two modern trans- lations which are quite first-rate. These are no doubt excluded by difficulties of copyright, and Hobbes is perhaps just a little too archaic, but it is none the less a thousand pities that a new translation has had to be specially pre- pared, and it is disappointing to find that it falls far below the high standard set by Jowett and maintained by Mr. Crawley. The translation of poetry has difficulties of its own, but of a translator of an historian it may fairly be asked that his version shall be idiomatic and natural enough to be tolerable to an Englishman who reads it without the Greek. It should stand by its own merits as a piece of English writing. This Mr. Foster Smith's version does not do. It is too literal ; it keeps too close to the sentence-form of the original—and the form of Thucydides' sentences can be of interest only to a student of • (1) Bonier : Odyssey in 2 vols.). Vol. IL With Translation by A. T. Murray, Professor of Greek. Stanford University, California.—(2) Plutarch: Lice, (in 11 vole.). Vol. VIII. With Translation by Bernadotte Penis. —(3) Thunedides : Binary of the Peloponnesian War (In 4 vole.). Vol. L With Tra nalatlon by C. Foster Smith. of the University of Wisconsin.— (4) Ley : Ab Ores Condita (in 13 vole.). Vol. I. With Translation by B. 0. Foster. Ph.D.. of Stanford University.—(5) Martial : Epigrams (in 2 vols.). Vol. I. With Translation by W. C. A. Ker, M.A., late Scholar a Trinity College, Cambridge.—(S) M. Cornelius Pronto: Correirpondence (in 2 vols.). Vol. L With Translation by 0. R. Haines. M.A.— (7) Ausonws : Poetical Works (in 2 vols.). Vol. L With Translation by H. G. Evelyn White. M.A., late Scholar of Wadham College, Oxford. All the above In the " Loeb Classical Library." London : Heinemann. (7s. ed. net each vol.] (8) Arteophanes : Clouds. Translated into corresponding metres by B. 13. Rogers. M.A., Hon. D.Litt. London : Bell. (Paper, 2a. net ; cloth, Se 6d. net.]—(9) &phonies : Amx. A line-for-line Verse Translation by R. C. Trevelyan. London : Allen and Unwin. 13.. 6d. net]—(10) Euripides Women of Troy. Translated into English Verse by F. A. Evelyn. London : Heath Cranton. [Ss. net.) —(11) Aeschylus : Agamemnon. Translated into English Verse by Rushworth Kennard Davis. Head-Master of Woodbridge School. late Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford. Oxford : Blackwell. 14e. ed. net.)—(12) Some Greek Masterpieces in Dramatic and Bucolic Poetry, thou', tst into English Peru : by William Stabbing, M.A., lion. Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. London : Fisher Unwin. 17s. ed. not.)—(13) Lucretius : On the Nature of Things. Translated Into English Verse by Sir Robert Allison. with Introduction, Appendices, and Motes. London : Humphreys. Us. ed. net.1
his Greek. It is true that the speeches are better translated than the narrative, but even here to readers who know Hobbes and Jowett the version will seem somewhat unenterprising and undistinguished.
Livy,4 who is also translated by an American scholar, has fared a good deal better. There is no great English tradition of translation from Livy, and Mr. Foster has set quite a high standard for the translators of the future by his careful and readable version of the first two books. He has twelve more volumes to produce, and one feel ; that it must have needed a stout heart to begin upon the gigantic labour that this will involve. But Livy, though there is an immense amount of him, is inexhaustibly interesting and delightful to a student of Latin style. What shall be said of the task of translating the whole of Martial ?" In selections and on occasions Martial is of course amusing and exhilarating in the extreme, but un- expurgated and in large quantities he is, like all epigrammatists, intolerable. The translator has not only to read him right through, spending as long over the bad as over the good, but he has deliberately to take from the best passages their brilliant and shapely brevity (their only merit in many cases) and set them down at length in shapeless prose. Happily, once made, the translation need not be read continuously or in quantity, and Mr. Ker in version and footnote has provided a convenient guide to the point of all the readable epigrams (the unreadable he has rendered into Italian), so that men who remember some of their Latin can look through for the best things and enjoy them again. But to the English reader who knows no Latin, Martial, however translated and explained, can hardly be expected to appeal. A verse epigram read in prose is worse than a verse epigram not read at all.
The most interesting, if not always the most valuable, volumes in the Loeb " series are those which make available " late " or little-heard-of writers. Pronto,' from the second century A.D., and Ausonius,7 from the fourth, are both included in the new seven volumes. Neither has ever before been translated into English, and, though Fronto's name is familiar as that of the tutor ofl Marcus Aurelius, little enough is known of either by ordinary men. Happily each is introduced by an excellent prefatory account, and in the case of Pronto, whose letters were discovered in two palimpsests only a century ago, enough informa- tion about the MS. is given to make parts of the book a really interesting lesson in textual criticism. Pronto was a dear old fellow, one feels after reading his letters, but, in spite of his great contemporary reputation as an orator, highly undistinguished. He and his Imperial pupil address each other in terms of quite extravagant affection, but the impression left by their letters is one less of fulsomeness than of feebleness, the pupil being a sentimental boy and the tutor making up by incontinence of emotion for extreme intellectual sterility.
Ausonius is not a scrap better in himself, though his very ordinary verses are interesting as a commentary on his times. He was born about 310 A.D., but the story of his career has a startlingly modern sound about it. He was a Professor at the University of Bordeaux, an early Count of the Roman Empire, and a church-going Christian who never dreamed of taking his religion seriously. It is true that he was also Consul and Praefectus Galliarum, but it is just this mixture of ancient and modern that makes his period so fascinating and Gibbon the most interesting history-book in the world. Ausonius does not deserve to be read a millennium and a half after his death, but as presented by Mr. Evelyn White, and through no fault of his own, he will amply repay the expenditure of seven and sixpence and a couple of hours.
But the " Loeb " translations are not the only ones being written and read just now. Mr. Rogers's Aristophanes 8- perhaps the best translation of a Greek author that has ever been made—is being reissued for English readers in single- play volumes (without either text or notes) at a moderate price. This is a welcome innovation, for the large volumes are expen- sive ; the only matter for regret is that the paper used in the new reprints is bad and looks as cheap as it is. Besides Aris- tophanes, plays by all three tragedians are now being issued in English metrical versions. Mr. R. C. Trevelyan translates the Ajax 9 " line for line," turning the dialogue into quite readable blank verse and the choruses into the rather queer lyrical prose that results from keeping the metres of the original. The effect intended and achieved is to enable one musical setting to fit both the Greek and the English words. This sort of translation has a purpose of its own, and must be criticized in relation to it. It is not fair to, complain if it does not seem to help the ordinary reader to enjoy the play. Much more successful from
this point of view is Mr. Evelyn's version of Euripides' Women of Troy." This is a charming translation, full of poetry that will appeal to an English ear, and yet it keeps wonderfully near to the spirit and tone of the Greek. The dialogue is in blank verse, but the choruses are represented by some very attractive short-line rhyming lyrics. The total effect is wholly successful, and it is much to be hoped that Mr. Evelyn, who has already translated the Bacchae, will continue his excellent work and give us the Medea and the Hippolytus before very long.
Euripides of course, whose stock epithet is " human," is much more manageable by a translator than the superhuman Aeschylus. Perhaps nothing in all Greek literature is more untranslatable than the Agamemnon," and few things have attracted more translators. Mr. Kennard Davis has now joined the number, and those who remember his delightful renderings from Catullus will agree that not many men have been better qualified than he to attempt the impossible. It must be admitted that he has had much greater success than any one who knows Aeschylus could have hoped. That he had a pretty gift of rhyming his Catullus had amply proved, but he has a bigger compass than we knew, and there is some noble writing in this Agamemnon. Of course his version is not Aeschylus, nor indeed is it very near to Aeschylus, but it is questionable whether anything nearer to him or more worthy of him has yet been achieved. To compare it with Paley's prose translation is not perhaps fair to Paley, but the comparison shows rather startlingly what our fathers had to be content with. In their time a trans- lation was a " crib " to be used by students and criticized by scholars. Nowadays translations are written for literary people in general, not all of whom know Greek. To them, whether scholars or not, Mr. Davis's work may be recom- mended unreservedly.
The criticism of verse translations is always a difficult business. One cannot ask that the translation shall equal the original in poetic quality, and some sense of inadequacy is therefore in- evitable. On the other hand, a verse translation has no right to exist if it does not reach a certain level merely as English poetry. So inadequacy must not go beyond a certain point ; if it does, the translator would have been wiser to keep silent. If a man loves his original and has enjoyed the work of translating him, he will have the sympathy of every scholar ; but it is just the scholar who will most resent the publication of a poor and unworthy translation of a great original. There is at least one new translation which can hardly fail to provoke some such resentment among men who love Greek poetry. Mr. Stebbing" has selected for translation some of the master- pieces in dramatic and bucolic poetry," and has thereby set himself a task in which he was foredoomed to fail. His title says that these masterpieces have been thought into English verse " ; but whatever the precise meaning of that rather affected phrase may be, they have for the most part been just translated into metrical English, and they have not been translated well. There is no excuse for offering a translation of passages like these if it is not a superlatively good translation. Many admirers of Mr. Stebbing and all lovers of Greek poetry will regret that this book ever saw the light.
One cannot feel quite the same about Sir Robert Allison's new verse translation of Lucretius," though it too is clearly not a good translation. Still, the author has made such a close and loving study of Lucretius, and spoken so understand- ingly of him in his preliminary chapter and incidental notes, that his book as a whole, including the uninspired but careful blank-verse translation, provides the unlearned with a really valuable introduction to the De Rerun' Natura--perlmps the greatest single achievement of the Roman genius. Lucretius has never before been made accessible to English readers in so convenient a form—nor, it may be added from the material point of view, in such a well-printed and extremely delightful volume. But the truth is that to render Lucretius' poetry into English poetry is nearly as great a task as it was to render into Latin poetry the philosophy of yesterday and the science of to-morrowwhich is the work that Lucretius did. To attempt it successfully a man would have to be as great a poet as Lucretius himself, and it would hardly be fair to ask that of Sir Robert Allison.
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