Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II. · Plutarch
PREFACE
A still more personal loss, which intimately concerns this volume, is that of Ingram Bywater. He had promised a revision of it in its passage through the press; and his vigilance as a Curator as well as his jealousy for the severer traditions of scholarship, apart from his personal kindness, would, I know, have made it a searching one. He did not specially care for English translation, and his own masterly version of the _Poetics_ of Aristotle is prefaced by something like a protest. Nor did he feel much sympathy with what he would call the ‘Realien’. On the realities of life no one had a saner or better informed judgement. For natural science and its representatives he cherished a genuine respect; and perhaps none of the tributes to his memory would have touched him more than one which was paid in the pages of _Nature_ by an old colleague and friend of the Exeter College days. But he had a certain shyness of the intrusion of arguments based, say, upon geometry or music, into problems of language already sufficiently perplexed. How generously his noble library and his own stores of wisdom were thrown open to those who sought them is known to many, as it is to myself. Yet another great loss to me has been that of the Rev. David Thomas, Rector of Garsington, in Oxfordshire, a veteran mathematician, my near neighbour and most kindly and helpful referee during many years.
I cannot send out even so small a volume without a word of gratitude for affectionate and lifelong help received from John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury 1885-1911. His own enduring contribution to secular scholarship was made in 1874, and holds its place in the judgement of Latin scholars. He was always shouldering new burdens, the last being the mastering, for a definite purpose of friendship and public duty, of the language and history of Sweden. But his great stores of books and of knowledge were always in order, and always made available to others. He would often preface any opinion of his own by ‘My father used to think highly’ of such a book or such a person; and it was always well to be reminded of that true scholar and most courteous gentleman of an older day. I owe much, for help and advice, to living friends whom I should like to thank, but may not. But I must be allowed to acknowledge, in no conventional spirit, the great care bestowed on these pages by the Reader for the Delegates of the Press, who has entered into difficulties of matter as well as of language as few scholars can be expected to have the patience to do.[17]
‘Ie donne avecque raison, ce me semble, la palme à Iacques Amyot sur touts nos escrivains françois, non seulement pour la naïfveté et pureté du langage, en quoy il surpasse touts aultres, ny pour la constance d’un si long travail, ny pour la profondeur de son sçavoir, ayant peu developper si heureusement un aucteur si espineux et ferré (car on m’en dira ce qu’on vouldra, ie n’entends rien au grec, mais ie veois un sens si bien ioinct et entretenu partout en sa traduction, que, ou il a certainement entendu l’imagination vraye de l’aucteur, ou ayant, par longue conversation, planté vifvement dans son ame une generale idee de celle de Plutarque, il ne luy a au moins rien presté qui le desmente ou qui le desdie); mais, sur tout, ie luy sçais bon gré d’avoir seu trier et choisir un livre si digne et si à propos pour en faire present à son pais.’
Since this Preface was written, early in 1916, a study of Plutarch, which should be of great value to his readers, has appeared in the _De Plutarcho scriptore et philosopho_, by Professor J. J. Hartman of Leyden. Professor Hartman is an enthusiast, and his book covers all the works of Plutarch, the _Moralia_ and the _Lives_, their relations to one another and to the author’s career. He is of opinion that the _Lives_ were taken in hand after all, or nearly all, the writings included in the _Moralia_ were completed, and then appeared in rapid succession of books. He observes that many of the pieces of the _Moralia_ suggest the date A.D. 107; the _Symposiacs_ he places somewhat later. Two conclusions, of much importance as coming from so serious a student, may be stated: the Christian teaching had never come into Plutarch’s hearing (p. 114, &c.), and there is no suggestion of any tendency to Oriental or Neoplatonic thought; Plutarch was the best living authority on Plato and his works, and aimed at being the Plato of his own day (pp. 389, 680, &c.). A large list of critical comments is appended to the general notice of each work. Professor Hartman takes as his basis the Teubner edition, and pays a well-merited tribute to the care and skill of M. Bernardakis (p. 237, &c.). His usual complaint is that the editor has lacked the boldness to incorporate in the text ingenious emendations which he mentions in notes. I had myself felt somewhat differently as to all unsupported emendations, though I am glad to repeat my sense of the great usefulness of the edition, my debt to which goes much beyond what I have expressly acknowledged.
Footnote 1: ‘Tout abregé sur un bon livre est un sot abregé.’—_Montaigne_, iii. 8. Footnote 2: Xylander reads οὐδέν, but οὐ before πολλά seems simpler, and makes better logic. Footnote 3: See, e. g., p. 266. Footnote 4: On this point, and on Plutarch’s life generally, see the buoyant and chivalrous pages of the late Mr. George Wyndham’s introduction to North’s _Lives_ in the _Tudor Translations_. Footnote 5: See pp. 54, 253. I have searched such numbers of the _Dissertations_ as appear to have reached this country from Vienna since 1910, without coming upon the continuation of Dr. Adler’s argument. It will be of great interest when it comes to hand, but could not adequately be discussed here. Footnote 6: ‘Où je puyse comme les Danaïdes, remplissant et versant sans cesse.’—i. 25. Footnote 7: The _Symposiacs_ were specially favourite reading of Archbishop Trench, whose bright little volume of _Lectures_ is perhaps the best introduction for English readers to the _Moralia_. Footnote 8: The same argument might perhaps be applied to the _Lives_, even as far as that of Dion, but there is no elaborate dedication there. Footnote 9: Dr. Mahaffy has acutely pointed out that the tract _De Tranquillitate animi_ must have been written before the accession of Titus in A. D. 79, because it contains a remark (467 E) that no Roman Emperor had yet been succeeded by his son. It is this sort of evidence of a date which we seek, but do not find, in the _Symposiacs_.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.