Tales from Plutarch. By F. Jameson Rowbotham. (T. Fisher Unwin.
5s.)—" Tales from Plutarch" should have more of the Plutarch tone about them. He loved gossip; he was not senti- mental. He would not have put into the mouth of Alcibiades what Mr. Rowbotham puts there. He is standing on the Acropolis, and he says : "It is good to be here on such a night as this, when each marble monument—nay, every stone which rests upon this sacred mount—is repeating to the listening stars its never-ending story of the heroes whose glorious deeds have made this city, this Athens, the marvel of the world." But he tells us about his lisp, and quotes an excellent joke from Aristophanes, of which readers might have had the benefit of a translation. On the spur of the moment we give what may serve. "This Mr. Lout, as ho calls himself," the real name being "Rout." In Plutarch's quotation KiSparcos (raven) is changed into koAcocos (toady). Where is the story of the dog for which Alcibiades gave £280, and cut off its tail, that his fellow-citizens might not talk about his more serious follies? And where, again, is the story of the schoolmaster who did not possess a Homer, and the schoolmaster who thought that he could emend him? Even the famous "lion cub" story is not here. "Don't rear a lion's cub in the city," said the wise man to some one who complained of Alcibiades's masterful ways, "but if you have reared him, humour him." Mr. Rowbotham has not given us Plutarch.
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