The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-08-25
HE VIEW !.

Corrected from the Greek, and Revised by A. h.
H Cough. Five Volumes. Boston Little, Brown, * Co.
We have here new edition, by an accom-
plished Oxford scholar, of Plutarch's lives, in
Eve octave volumes, printed upon the best OF
paper, and in type and style of very superior
excellence.
The work is prefaced by biography OF Plu-
: tarch, accompanied by notes, and concluded
with good index. So far as respects the me-
chanical merits of the book, it may be pro-
nounced faultless and this judgment is as ap-
plicable to the texture body, and purity, of the
paper, as to the quality and character of the
Typography.
Of all the works Of antiquity, the lives of Plu-
tarch have probably exerted most influence
over very many distinguished characters of
modern times; and we doubt whether now, in
work can be named so generally read by the
young men of the world as are these biogra-
pdies by Plutarch, or which, when read, afford
an equal stimulant to their ambition.
Independent of the inherent difficulty of
translating work of an ordinary Greek writer
into English, there is, in the case of Plutarch,
others, arising from the errors and imperfections
with which the early manuscripts abound, and
from the peculiar involvement Of his sentences,
so interviewer, one with the other as to extend
his periods to great lengths, taxing at once the
skill Of the translator to disentange and break
them into parts, or to give them such literal
rendering as to make good, readable English
Great therefore, as has been the demand for
good translation, no one had, as yet, been
furnished, according, in all respects, with the
acquisitions Of criticism, until the appearance
Of the present edition. This version has for its
basis that called Dryden's, though no one of
the Lives was, in fact, ever translated by that
distinguished poet. For the edition bearing
his name, the great poet wrote, in his very
best manner, the Epistle Dedicatory and the
Life of Plutarch the Lives themselves were
translated by as many as forty different hands
some Of them distinguished as poets wits,
scholars, and authors in various departments of
literature-and among them men famous almost
as any on the rolls of Engands worthless. Mr.
afterwards Lord John Somers, whose great
name so conspicuously honors English history
! translated the Lille OF AlClDldQeS.
Notwithstanding the eclat by which this
work Of Dryden's was heralded at the time, its
translations were found to be of unequal merit
and, taken as a whole, might be considered
more as a booksellers job than as a publica
ton, upon the perfection of which the transla-
tors staked their characters as authors and
scholars.
Room was therefore left for further adven-
turers in the same field, and accordingly,
though repeated editions of Dryden's version
had been printed, and on several occasions
revised, the brothers John and William Lang
horne, about 1860, gave new translation,
with notes, Plutarchs Biography, and a copi-
Gus index.
This latter translation, though dull and feebly
written, was supposed to be, on the whole, a
more faithful rendering of the Greek into Eng
fish than any former one, and has in the main,
through numerous editions, kept possession of
our libraries ever since.
Thus rapidly noticing the Englished editions
of Plutarch's famous Lives, preceding this, by
Mr. Clough, it may be as well for us to state
that George Long, distinguished Cambridge
scholar, and the writer of many of the articles
for Smiths celebrated Dictionaries of Greek
and Roman Antiquities and of Greek and
Roman Biography and Mythology, translated
and published, in five small volumes, between
1874 and l848 at London, the lives of so many
of Plutarch's heroes as were connected with the
civil wars of Rome, with very valuable notes,
illustrative of the text and of the history of those
| times.
If Mr.. Long, who is fine scholar and writer,
as well as profound and enlightened thinker,
had translated and edited the whole work of
Plutarch as he has done this part of it, there
would, in our opinion, have been no necessity
for the edition by Mr.. Clough, placed at the
head of this notice.
Prior to the translations we have mentioned,
and in the young, vigorous manhood of our
literature, Sir Thomas North gave US, from the
French Of Amyot, an English translation of
Plutarch, the first in our language. This is
in good, racy old English, was published at
London, 1879 and was the Plutarch of William
Shakspeare-the mine from which he derived
and moulded his immortal Roman plays-and
from which most of his Greek and Roman lore
| appears to have been acquired
Well does the writer of this remember with
what interest, many years ago, he took up the
! play of Antony and Cleopatra and the Roman
plays of Shakespeare, on the one hand, and the
lives of Antony, Brutus, Caesar, &C., by Plutarch,
on the other, and traced the illusions, incidents,
and characterizations of the great dramatist to
their sources, in these ancient biographies as
| Enqlisled by Thomas North.
Well may Englishmen and their offspring
cherish Plutarch's Lives, if for no other reason
than that in them is to be found the origin of
some of the mightiest emanations of human
| genius, and the truest representations of the
might and majesty of their English tongue.
From such a comparison of parts of these
TRANSACTIONS as we have found leisure to make
we have no hesitation in saying that the one
revised by Mr.. Clough, now under considera
ton, is decidedly the best and most readable.
1t seems to us faithful to the original, whilst it
is clear, strong, and idiomatic. The revision
of the Dryden text has evidently not been
nominal one, but close, rigid, and severe, with
the text of the old Greek biographer every mo-
ment by his side and in his mind, and with
such aid as he could derive from the great ad-
vance in the literature and photography of
| Greece and Rome since former translatens
were made. 1t does not pretend to be an en-
tire new translation, though it is probably as
accurate rendering of the original as can well
be made, consistently with the idioms of the two