The Letters of Pliny the Younger. The Translation of Melmoth.
Revised and Corrected by the Rev. F. C. T. Bosanquet. (Bell and Sons.) —This is a useful addition to " Behn's Classical Library." Melmoth's translation is spirited and vigorous, and Mr. Bosanquot has sought to alter it, in the direction of greater literalness in the text," without in- terfering with its peculiar merits. This is, of course, a very difficult task to achieve. The smart, eighteenth-century, man-of-the-world style, which Molmoth used with no little skill, hardly bears to bo meddled with. On the other hand, we require an exactness now-a-days, seeing that we road our Classics not for their own sake, but for advantages to be acquired for knowing them, which the translators of the last century never dreamed of giving. Sometimes, accordingly, we wish that the revisor had done his work wholly de novo, and sometimes that ho had left it alone. But such thoughts are really unreasonable. It is not too much to say that ho has done the best that was possible uudor the cir- cumstances, and has made a good book more accessible and more serviceable.
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