EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES.
Saturday Review.
If the other volumes are as well executed as this, the monthly issue will soon furnish excellent guidance to the whole field of classical literature, and when the way is thus rendered clear, good translations will be read with far more pleasure and discrimination. We anticipate that the judicious and novel design of such a series will meet, as it deserves, with widespread and lasting favour; and that, with its success, juster ideas will more generally prevail of the characteristics of the great writers of old.
Civil Service Gazette.
No more happy idea has been conceived of late than that of which this is the first instalment.... If the other volumes to follow equal the ‘Iliad,’ the series will be a most charming and instructive one, and the ‘Ancient Classics for English Readers’ will be a most invaluable aid to modern Education.
Spectator.
Mr Collins deserves, or probably shares with his publishers, the highest praise for a discovery which is not the less meritorious because it now seems obvious. Labour without end has been spent with but little success on the attempt to bring the great Greek and Latin classics within the reach of unlearned readers. In truth, the method commonly pursued, the method of translation, is cumbrous and ineffective. Translation exercises an extraordinary fascination on those who practise it, and it is not without a literary value, but it is least appreciated by those for whom it is primarily intended. Pope’s brilliant paraphrases really please, and Lord Derby is read because he was a great English noble; but how few readers appreciate the exquisite skill with which Mr Worsley performed the task of translating the ‘Odyssey’! The advantage of the present series is, that the writers are not fettered by the fidelity which often hampers a translator; that they can omit, or shorten, or give in full as they please; that they can avail themselves of the finest work of translation when any scene has to be presented in detail; that they can introduce appropriate illustrations into the body of the work and not relegate them to the obscurity of notes, and that they can do all this within the compass of such a volume as can easily be read through at a sitting. As to the two books before us, the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey,’ they remind us of Lamb’s ‘Tales from Shakespeare.’ Other matter, indeed, they contain; but this is the most attractive part of them, and it is no slight praise to say that they need not shrink from the comparison. We may say, indeed, though we have one or two faults to find with details of execution, that they are admirably well done. The main points of incident and character are skilfully seized; the criticisms, both ethical and artistic, are sound and judicious; the style is simple and spirited. Even readers of but little application will find them easy to get through, and no one can read them without really learning something about Homer.
Vanity Fair.
To such persons, who often in after-years feel keenly the neglect or want of opportunities for becoming acquainted with the world-renowned old Greek and Latin authors, and who, from press of occupation, are unable to recover their lost ground, these volumes will present themselves as a real boon; and if the succeeding volumes come up to the standard of the one now before us, it is difficult to conceive how they could gain their knowledge in a pleasanter, clearer, or more concise form.... This well-printed, handy little volume, then, deserves our unqualified praise. There is many a Paterfamilias who, having for years past been obliged to listen in dignified but pusillanimous silence to the sly classical allusions of his precocious offspring, will now be enabled, thanks to these little books, to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and terrify and startle his astonished family by learned disquisitions on the character of Agamemnon, and pedantic conjectures as to the birthplace of Homer.