Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/507

 S.V.MAY 26, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

419

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Propertius. Translated by J. S. Phillimore, M.A.

(Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

LIKE the scholar whom Moses Primrose, in 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' encountered in a coffee-house, Prof. Phillimore has given to the world an edition of Propertius with notes. This, which appeared as the Clarendon Press text in 1902, has been followed by a distinctly more arduous labour in the shape of a prose translation of the poems, which occupies an honourable place in "The Oxford Library of Translations." The volume now issued is intended to serve two purposes. While it aims at supplying an insight into the poet to those who have no Latin, it seeks also to facilitate the study of the original. In both attempts as much success as was to be hoped is obtained, and the book, which is a delight to the general reader, is a possession to the scholar. How charged with difficulties are the poems of Propertius is known, and the second book was pronounced by the younger Scaliger to be almost unintelligible. A meaning of a sort is given in the translations, which are often singularly happy, if occasionally a little quaint. In the second elegy of the first book, by which in one of his best- known poems Ben Jonson seems to have been inspired, Propertius says, very happily, to his beloved Cynthia, "These are the graces which shall ever make you the favourite of my life, if you will only tire of this wretched modishness." This is, of course, a free rendering of the " Tsedia dum misene sunt tibi luxurise" of the original.

The preface has much that is ingenious to say on the task of translating verse into prose.

A View of the English Stage ; or, a Series of Dramatic Criticisms. By William Hazlitt. Edited by W. Spencer Jackson. (Bell & Sons.) FIRST collectively reprinted in 8vo in 1818, Hazlitt's stage criticisms were reissued in 12m o in 1851. Since then, though the best things of the kind in the language, they had slept as a separate issue until, with some slight modification, they are now republished as a volume of "Bohn's Standarc Library." The present is, thanks to its editorial annotations, the best edition that has yet seen the light, as it is, owing to the additions to the text, the first that may be regarded as complete. The criticisms it reproduces first appeared in The Morning Chronicle, The Champion, The Examiner and The Times. Their chief value is found in th< comments upon the early performances of Edmund Kean, which are inimitable. Their appearance in their present shape affords an admirable oppor tunityfor studying afresh the criticisms upon the minor lights of the day. These are not seldon intemperate, and some of them with difficulty escape the charge of malignancy. In freshness anc animation they surpass anything that has been written since Leigh Hunt.

Longinus on the Sublime. Translated by A. Prickard. With Introduction, Appendix, an Index. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) THAT a new translation of Longinus was indis pensable may not be said. Coming as it does fronr the pen of so exemplary a scholar as Mr. Prickan and accompanied as it is by an introduction an

otes which are marked by lucidity and penetrative nsight, that which is now given us is specially welcome. It is, indeed, in all respects a model, ound and judicious in view, and attractive, and en alluring, in treatment, so that its perusal, nee begun, is certain to be continued. Mystery nvelopes almost everything belonging to a man who r as the greatest intellect of his age, and whose forks, pregnant as they are, reach us in so frag- mentary a condition. That the writer is the same s Cassius Longinus, the minister of Zenobia, is hown to be open to doubt, and the question is nsolved whether the work belongs to the first or he third century of our era. Mommsen, quoted in- n appendix, calls the dissertation on the sublime- 'one of the finest aesthetic works preserved to us rom antiquity," and says that it proceeds certainly, ' if not from a Jew, at any rate from a man who- evered alike Homer and Moses." Among the- notable utterances is the praise of the phrase, " Let here be light, and there was light." The book is n the highest sense, masterly.

Homeland Handbooks. Hertford ; Minehead, For- lock, and Dunster ; Lynton, Lynmouth, and the Lorna Doone Country ; Horsham and St. Leonard's Forest ; Oxted, Limpsfield. and Edenbridge ; Rei- gate and Redhill ; Diinstable ; Woking and Ripley^ (Homeland Association House, Bride Lane.) WE have received a batch of the Homeland Asso- ciation Handbooks, issued under the editorship of Vlr. Prescott Row. With their maps reproduced 3y permission from the Ordnance Survey, their numerous and well-executed illustrations, and their accurate and authoritative information, they con- stitute an ideal series for the intending traveller, and are well calculated to encourage the exploration of spots of beauty at home. Special attention is aaid to buildings of interest or importance ; chap-
 * ers are devoted to sports connected with the

neighbourhood and district ; and descriptions are 's becoming extensive, fifty volumes having been ssued. A complete set would furnish a useful gazetteer. Each volume contains from twenty to iifty good illustrations, and they range in price from sixpence to half-a-crown.
 * iven of pleasant and profitable walks. The series

The Vicar of \Vakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith.

With an Introduction by Richard Garnett. (De

La More Press.) AN exquisite edition of Goldsmith's masterpiece is added to the charming " King's Classics." It lias a portrait of the author from a drawing in the British Museum, and a very tasteful and appro- priate introduction by Dr. Garnett, and is in all respects ideal.

The Edinburgh jRevietv. April. (Longmans & Co.) which we are in full agreement ; it is well written,, and the author is not afraid of plainness of speech, but we think the title was not wisely chosen. That the style, and indeed the mechanism, of the furni- ture of the age of Louis XV. casts light on the morals and manners of the time is certain ; but if all our records of the time were blotted out, and the furniture alone remained, would it be possible- from it alone to construct a picture of the days when ifc was in use ? Aa we know what that degraded society was like, we can interpret the inner meanings of its household stuff, and that, in.
 * THE HISTORY OF FURNITURE' is a paper with