BOOKS.
PETRONIUS.*
Jr Petronius were to be re-translated, which, on the whole, we think was needful, the work could not have been more skilfully accomplished than it has been by Mr. Mitchell. The author has very ably -carried out his intention to get, through the use of _colloquial English, the extreme characteristic impression of the kind of Latin used by Petronius. Petronius is essentially a vivid, rattling, boisterous, knockabout book, and so is the new version.
All we have got of the " Satyricon " is a series of fragments, including "Adventures," "Dashes of Poetry," and pieces of lightning literary criticism, the whole interwoven with the story of the three disgraceful young blackguards who hung about the high roads and the "suburban residences" of the new rich, varying their cadging by an occasional act of burglary or petty lareeny. The notes are excellent, and the chief beastlinesses of the work are very properly concealed in the language of the original.
Taken as a whole, the book affords a most Illuminating view of life during the middle period of the Empire. The account of the vulgar, self-made millionaire is masterly. In spite of the atmosphere of exaggerated farce one gets a real -picture of the man. The scene at the old reservoirs, which have been turned into a rich man's bath, is inimitable, and has been thoroughly well translated. That, however, was a comparatively easy task. Far more difficult was the rendering of the famous passage of Peen:mins Zeader of Fashion. BY 3. M. Mitchell. 0.B.E., M.O. London: 1,outledffe. [8a. &I. net.]
• - sentiment, that is, the discovery of the drowned man's body— the passage which so greatly fascinated Jeremy Taylor. "The Ephesian Widow," which again, enriously enough, strayed into one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons, is very well rendered.
Before we leave the book we will give one good example of the translator's manner. Go to-day into the taproom of some country inn, and this is almost exactly what you will hear in the spirit if not in the letter :—
"With this Phileros gave way and Ganymedo chimed in I You fellows are talking of things which don't matter a scrap in heaven or earth, and no one seems to care about the ruinous rise in corn. I take my oath I couldn't find a bite of bread to-day. And look how the drought continues ! We've been on short commons for a whole year now. Devil take the com- missioners, they're hand in glove with the bakers. "You help me, and I'll help you " ; the unhappy public is between the upper and the nether millstone, while your lordly gluttons have one long beanfeast. Ali, for a week of those sturdy warriors whom I found here when I first arrived from Asia I That was real life Those money-grubbing magistrates used to get a gruelling as bad as if Jupiter himself had been annoyed with them. I recollect Safinius. He lived by the old arch, when I was a boy, and a peppery fellow he was. The very pavement smoked when he walked. But he was as straight as a die, and never went back on a pal. You could play " Up, Jenkins !" with him in the dark without a qualm. In the House he laid out opponents right and loft: there was no finesse about him— he hit straight from the shoulder. When he argued a calm in the Courts his voice resounded like a trumpet. He never mopped his brow, or hemmed and hawed. I think he had Asiatic blood in his veins. How genially he returned a greeting I He knew us all by name, and addressed us like comrades. And so in those days corn was dirt cheap ; for a penny you could buy a loaf bigger than you and a pal could eat ; now they run smaller than bulls' eyes. Alas, alas It gets worse every day ; this place is growing downwards like a cow's tail. But why do we put up with a third-rate minister who thinks more of a penny in his own pocket than our very existence ? So he chuckles gleefully at home, and nets more in a single day than another has in his whole fortune. I could tell you here and now of a single deal in which he made 1,000 guineas. If we had the courage of a mouse, he would soon cease to feather his nest. Nowadays the public is a lion indoors, but a fox in the open. This is my trouble : I have already eaten up My wardrobe, and if famine prices are maintained, "my little wooden hut" must go. What will become of the wretched place forsaken by God and man I bet my bottom dollar that this is the hand of Providence. Not a soul says his prayers ; nobody fasts ; nobody cares a jot for Jove. We con our ledgers with our eyes glued to the figures. In bygone days matrons in their go-to- meeting mantles would climb up the hill barefoot, with di- shevelled hair and a pure heart, and offer prayers for rain. Forth- with it used to rain cats and dogs—it was then or never And they all struggled home soaked to the skin. Nowadays we are all atheists, and naturally the gods keep their feet in cotton wool. Our fields are barren and —2
" ' Bless my soul,' interrupted Echion, the shoddy-magnate, 'don't whine like that. "it 's down to-day and up to-morrow," as the yokel said when he lost his piebald pig. It's just the swing of the pendulum, and the world wags just the same. I take my oath, the old country is all right—and only man is vile I There's a slump in our markets, but so there is abroad. We've no business to be down-hearted ; the sun's the same distance away everywhere! If you emigrated, you'd be yarning dolefully about the pork-chops walking about in the streets at home."
That is an extraordinary piece of anticipation. The last passage makes an optimistic leader writer positively feel cold at the pit of his stomach. What is the use of being original when all the time Petronius has been there before you. That emigration sentence has been in every daily for the past sir
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