Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/56

 in the Authorized Version of the Bible; they are invaluable for the elucidation of the subject-matter. Opposite the Greek text is an entirely new Latin version, very close and accurate. There follows a continuous commentary, with scrupulous inquiry into the work of earlier interpreters, explanations of the technical terms and phrases, parallels from authors, ancient and modern, and many references to the Sacred Scriptures. The sources of Marcus' sayings are indicated and his doctrine illustrated. The chronological and material background is filled in from historical documents and literary evidence. In passing, Gataker proposes many palmary emendations of the authors, sacred and profane, whose works he quotes.

The notes are enriched by communications made to Gataker by Saumaise, Patrick Young (Junius), the Biblical scholar and King's librarian, and by Arnold Boot, a learned Dutchman, a physician who was the friend of Archbishop Ussher. Besides all this, there are copious indexes and a preface with a study of the Stoic philosophy, and a generous but judicious comparison of the moral teaching of Marcus Aurelius with that of Christianity. The preface closes with the words: 'this dissertation, such as it is, with eyes clouded by old age and troubled with rheum, a hand trembling with the frost and sickness (as I had no secretary to assist me), I have heaped together rather than composed, scribbled rather than written this poor work, in Surrey, in the parish of Redrith (Rotherhithe), a suburb of my native city London, in January, in a severe winter, twin brother to the winter of old age and weakness, in the year of salvation 1651, the seventy-eighth of my life'.

These sad lines will explain how it was that Gataker had little or no part in seeing the volume through the press. The reader will condone a few blemishes upon so vast a performance, mistaken references (few in all) from one part of the book to another, occasional inexactitudes and xlviii