OTHER RECENT BOOKS
MR. TURNER'S translation, a sound, colloquial one, is of Part I of Barclay's Euphormionis Lusinini Satyllcon, first published in Paris in 1603. In its time, this was a book of some Popularity, providing both a guessing game as roman d clef and entertainment as a Petron- Ian series of adventures and talk. In fact, in situation, form and phrase, Barclay's work is a frank pastiche of the more famous Satyricon, and shares some of the readability of that masterpiece. This is the first time it has ap- peared in English; a useful addition, as the book was of influence in the beginnings of the English novel and the French romance.
When so many of our best authors survive only in cheap and shabby 'Classics,' the choice of so minor a work for fine, production might be disputed, but what is astonishing is the material result. From publishers with some reputatim, here, nevertheless, are all the easy affectations that have given such a bad name to the 'collector's edition' : the thick rag paper, the deckle edges, the vast margins, the severe limitation of copies that has its eye rather on the scarcity market than on the possible decline of standard after a certain number of sheets had been printed. There are points at fault beyond this: the act of reading is hampered by a kind of snow-blindness that comes from the exhibition of so much good paper, and by a length of line just a little too long. The book has bold wood-engravings by Derrick Harris, printed in crimson frames, and commendable in themselves; yet the text, set in Eric Gill's finely formed Perpetua, puts up a brave but unequal struggle against them, and against the paper too. It was not a wise choice of type. Again, the illustrations and title-page are wrongly positioned, optically, on their pages. and a well-designed book does not contain, at one end and the other, ten blank pages. The binding is slack, and why the translator's, rather than the author's, name on the spine?
On the whole, the defects outweigh the merits (one good point is the excellent press- work of he Chiswick Press). Euphormio's Satyricon will appeal to bibliomaniacs, but not to bibliophiles, and if the ordinary booklover clings to his seven guineas after a rapid post- mortem, it will be because he has diagnosed a fatal deficiency of two essentials of fine book- production : imaginative handling and scrupu- lous planning.
PAUL DINNAGE
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