Of older scholars who had dealt with Plutarch, by far the most important was Turnebus[[16]] (1512-65). Of Xylander (W. Holzmann, 1532-76), who produced the Latin translation, the basis of his own commentary, and a Greek text, Wyttenbach writes with much respect and sympathy, as he does also of Reiske (1716-74), his own contemporary, who, however, was not quite adequately equipped, in point of material or of critical judgement.
I should like to express my deep sense of the loss caused to classical scholarship by the lamented death of Herbert Richards. I have more than once referred to his critical notes on the Moralia, which have been appearing lately in the Classical Review: many of the finer points of Greek idiom do not concern a translator, but there are several most valuable suggestions and criticisms which I have felt confidence in adopting.
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]]
The style of Plutarch has not received much favour with scholars. He uses too many words, and writes in cumbrous sentences, and the words often seem ill-shapen. But it has merits which are acknowledged by all those who have dwelt much upon him. His style is a very honest one; at the end of the longest sentence it is always found that he has said something worth saying, and that no word can be retrenched as mere verbiage. And he is so much in earnest that he often reaches an eloquence, which burns, perhaps, with a dull glow, but which cannot be quite lost in any translation. Indeed the modern languages have sometimes an advantage in the fact that they do not possess counterparts, as long and as elaborate, of the terms used in the original. Of the first, and the best, of Plutarch’s translators, Montaigne[[18]] has written an opinion, to which it should be added that, in the judgement of very capable persons, Amyot[[19]] was a scholar of real knowledge and penetration, though he is sometimes content to paraphrase:
‘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.