CLASSICS FOR THE AMATEUR.
[To TM EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I regret my error in speaking of Jowett's translation of Thucydides as earlier than Crawley's, but I had not the least intention of suggesting that the one owed anything to the other. Crawley is to my mind a better translator than Jowett, but I firmly believe that "Leviathan " Hobbes is better than either of them. He is certainly more entertaining, and his maps and plans are a dream of delight. Moved by your correspondent's letter, I have turned up Crawley's Preface, and I am amused to find him saying :-
" I began this translation . . . very much in love with my author and sufficiently simple to think that all the world must be eager ,to read Thucydides.' The publication of the first book very quickly convinced me of my error."
Hobbes seems to have had the same experience :- "These Vertues of my Author did so take my affection that they begat in me a desire to communicate him further.. . For it is an errour we easily fall into, to believe that what- soever pleaseth us, will be in like manner and degree acceptable to all. . . . And in this errour peradventure was I."
Crawley adds: " If I have failed . . . it is not from any lack of diligence." Hobbes says that his work has been done " with much more Diligence than Elegance."
These quotations are from the Dedication and Preface of 1634, prefixed to the second edition of 1676. I trust that there is no mistake in the dates this time, and that I shall not seem to have suggested that Hobbes's Preface owed anything to Crawlers.
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