PREFACE

The recent very general interest in poetics has led me to prepare these translations of the essays on poetry by Plutarch and Basil the Great, in the hope that they may prove useful to students of literature. Although they were not epoch-making, these essays are worthy of consideration, for, besides their intrinsic value, they mark interesting stages in the history of poetic criticism.

The essay on How a Young Man Ought to Study Poetry was first rendered into English by Philemon Holland, who made a complete translation of the Morals, which was issued in octavo from the press of Arnold Hatfield, a London printer, in 1603. Its title reads as follows: 'The Philosophie, commonlie called The Morals, written by the learned Philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea. Translated out of Greek into English, and conferred with the Latin translations and the French, by Philemon Holland of Coventrie, Doctor in Physicke. Whereunto are annexed the Summaries necessary to be read before every Treatise.' This version, though its archaism possesses an undeniable charm, is not altogether adapted to modern requirements. A second edition, 'newly revised and corrected,' appeared in 1657, and this was followed not many years later by the translation of the Morals 'by Several Hands,' published in London in 16841694. To this work Simon Ford contributed the version of the essay on How a Young Man Ought to Study Poetry. Ford's translation is clumsy, frequently obscure, and often wide of the Greek. In 1870 Professor Goodwin offered a corrected and revised text of this rendering of the Morals, and the fact that the sixth edition appeared in 1898 attests the usefulness of this revised version. However, of the essay under consideration much more than a revision of

Ford's translation is needed, if the essay is to assume its proper place in our study of poetics.

There seems to have been one separate translation of Basil's homily into English, although it is not recorded in the catalogue of the British Museum. It appeared at the press of John Cawood in octavo form, and was printed in black letter. According to Ames and Herbert1 it bore the following title: 'An Homelye of Basilius Magnus, Howe Younge Men oughte to reade Poets and Oratours. Translated out of Greke. Anno M. D. LVII.' Anno M. D. LVII.' Nothing seems

to be known about the author.

It is interesting to find that the two essays of Plutarch and Basil were associated by Archbishop Potter of Canterbury in the first of his learned publications. In 1694, when barely twenty, and just after he was made a Fellow of Lincoln College, he published at Oxford an octavo volume with the following title: 'Variantes Lectiones et Notae ad Plutarchi librum de Audiendis Poetis; et ad Basilii Magni Orationem ad Juvenes.' In 1753 a second edition of this book was issued at Glasgow. Potter, however, was not the first to associate these essays; in 1600 Martin Haynoccius published them in an Enchiridion Ethicum, and Grotius brought out an edition of the two at Paris in 1623.

A German dissertation, De Fontibus Plutarchi Comment. de Audiendis Poetis et de Fortuna, written by August Schlemm, and published at Göttingen in 1894, shows the probable indebtedness of Plutarch's essay to the lost writings of the Stoics and Peripatetics. I am indebted to Herr Schlemm for several of my notes, and offer his conclusions in an appendix.

In the present renderings an attempt has been made to express the spirit and style of the originals, and thus to reproduce the looseness and indirectness of Plutarch's thought, as well as the conciseness and rapid movement of Basil's language. The translation of Plutarch follows the

1 Typographical Antiquities, London, 1785–6–90.

2 See Dict. Nat. Biog. s. v. John Potter.

text of Bernardakis, and the rendering of Basil the text of Migne. Acknowledgment should be made of suggestions taken from the earlier English translations of Plutarch, from the German version of Basil by Kaltwasser, and from Maloney's school edition of Basil's essay. For the many quotations from the Iliad and the Odyssey, the translations by Lang, Leaf, and Myers, and by Butcher and Lang, have been adopted; wherever quotations from Plato or from Aristotle's Poetics have been embodied in the notes, the versions of Jowett and of Butcher have been followed.

The notes attempt to show the indebtedness of the essays to earlier Greek literature, and to furnish interesting parallels from the classics, but do not cite the many passages from modern writers which are similar in thought. Biographical notices are taken from Johnson's Encyclopaedia, Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, and Müller's Handbuch der Klassischen Alterthumswissenschaft. Fragments from the Greek philosophers, dramatists, and lyrists, are referred to the collections of Mullach, Nauck, Meineke, and Bergk, even when these essays furnish the sources for the fragments. A few quotations and allusions have escaped me, and I shall be grateful to any reader who will direct my attention to the originals.

The preparation of this volume was undertaken at the suggestion of Professor Albert S. Cook, and it owes much to his interest. Professor George D. B. Pepper, ex-President of Colby College, has read the translations with painstaking care, and Dr. Charles Grosvenor Osgood, Jr., of Yale University, has read both translations and introduction; to their suggestions the book, whatever its imperfections, is greatly indebted. To my colleagues, Dr. Thomas F. Kane and Dr. Arthur S. Haggett, with whom I have frequently advised, I also acknowledge my obligations.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON.

August 16, 1902.

F. M. P.