Some Books of the Week
Tun publisher styles Virgil, the Georgics (in English hexa- meters), by C. W.' Brodaibb- (Benn, 12s. 6d.), an excellent gift-book, and he is quite right. He has done his own work of production, as Maud Reed-Cooper has done hers of decora- tion with woodcuts, altogether admirably. Of the actual rendering of the Georgics it would be too hard to say that they realized the scriptural conception of the blessedness of gifts. But appreciative readers are not likely to be very numerous. The reader who is not a classic will- find the " barbarous hexameter, barbarous experiment " trying, the style, though ingenious and sometimes lofty, uneven and artificial, and the constant allusions, in the absence of explanatory notes, incom- prehensible. The classic will wonder why so much real scholar- ship and ingenuity should be expended on a tour de force. A translation is either an addition to literature or a good crib, occasionally both. Virgil added to literature, but did not make a good crib of Hesiod. Mr. Brodribb aims higher than a crib of Virgil, but his fidelity to the original mars his contribution to English literature.
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