Among her thronged emotions we look in vain for shame. Her nakedness is a coarse chance of her overwhelming situation, for which she is no more concerned than for her galled wrists or her dishevelled hair. What is it to such a queen as she, that the eyes of grinning brutes are blessed by her perfect beauties?
The qualities which constitute true greatness in a statue such as this are, if we apprehend them aright,—first, that sublime simplicity of Idea which omnipotently sways the beholder, and alike inspires his coarseness or his culture; next, that personality, that moving humanness of feeling, which holds him by his very heart-strings, and makes him forget its marble, to accept its flesh and blood; and, finally, that wondrous skill of nice manipulation, which, neglecting nothing in the myriad of anatomical and physiological details,—not even the faintest sigh or the dimmest tremor,—tells, fibre by fibre, a tale that all may read, and comes to us with a story "to hold children from play and old men from the chimney-corner."
Tried by this definition, we believe the "White Captive" proves its claim to genuine greatness, and that it will presently take its place, with the world's consent, in the front rank of modern statues,—good among the best, in the flesh-and-bloodness and the soul of it. It is original, it is faithful, it is American; our women may look upon it, and say, "She is one of us," with more satisfaction than the Greek women could have derived from the Venus de' Medici, with its insignificant head and its impossible spine.
Especially true to the American type, as compared in statues with the familiar Greek, the head of the "White Captive" is large; but that it is too large, or in excess of the least of a thousand female heads that have been gathered around it since it was first exposed to the public scrutiny, we have failed to discover in repeated and careful examinations; and we are constrained to commend such as may be exercised on that point to the critical flippancies of the jaunty gentlemen who find the hips at once too broad and too narrow, the bosom too full and too young, the arms too meagre and too stout.
FOREST PHOTOGRAPHS.
We call the attention of our readers to a series of twelve photographic views of forest and lake scenery published by Mr. J.W. Black, Boston, from negatives taken by Mr. Stillman in the Adirondack country. The points of view are chosen with the fine feeling of an artist, and the tangled profusion and grace of the forest, with the moment's whim of sunfleck and shadow, are given with exquisite delicacy. Whatever the all-beholding sun could see in those woodland depths we have here,—sketches of the shaggy Pan snatched at unawares in sleep. One may study these pictures till he becomes as familiar as a squirrel with fern and tree-bark and moose-wood and lichen, till he knows every trunk and twig and leaf as intimately as a sunbeam.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Plutarch's Lives. The Translation called Dryden's. Corrected from the
Greek, and Revised, by A.H. CLOUGH, sometime Fellow and Tutor of
Oriel College, Oxford, and late Professor of the English Language and
Literature at University College, London. Boston: Little, Brown, &
Company. 1859. Five vols. 8vo.
In these five handsome volumes, we have, at length, a really good edition in English of Plutarch's Lives. One of the most delightful books in the world, one of the few universal classics, appears for the first time in our language in a translation worthy of its merits.
Mr. Clough, whose name is well known, not only by scholars, but also by the lovers of poetry, has performed the work of editor with admirable diligence, fidelity, and taste. The labor of revision has been neither slight nor easy. It has, indeed, amounted to not much less than would have been required for the making of a new translation. The versions in the translation that bears Dryden's name, made, as they were, by various hands, and apparently not submitted to the revision of any competent scholar, were unequal in execution, and were disfigured by many mistakes, as well as by much that was slovenly in style. At the time they were made, scholarship in England was not at a high point. Bentley had not yet lifted it out of mediocrity, and the translators were not stimulated by the fear either of severe criticism or of comparison of their labors with any superior work. The numerous defects of this translation are spoken of by the Langhornes, in the Preface to their own, with a somewhat jealous severity, which gives unusual vigor to their sentences. "The diversities of style," say they, "were not the greatest fault of this strange translation. It was full of the grossest errors. Ignorance on the one hand, and hastiness or negligence on the other, had filled it with absurdities in every Life, and inaccuracies on almost every page." This is a hard, perhaps an extreme judgment; but it serves to show the difficulties that would attend a revision of such a work. These difficulties Mr. Clough has fairly met and overcome. We do not mean to say that he has reduced the whole book to a perfect uniformity, or even to entire elegance and exactness of style; but he has corrected inaccuracies, he has removed the chief marks of negligence or haste; and, after a careful comparison of a considerable portion of the work as it now appears with the Greek text, we have no hesitation in saying that this translation answers not merely to the demands of modern scholarship, but forms a book at once essentially accurate and delightful for common reading.[A] We think, moreover, that Mr. Clough was right in choosing the so-called Dryden's translation as the basis of his work. Its style is not old enough to have become antiquated, while yet it possesses much of the savor and raciness of age. The book is interesting from Dryden's connection with it, but still more so—considering how slight that connection was, his only contribution to it being the Life of Plutarch—from the fact, that the translations of some of the Lives were made by famous men, as that of Alcibiades by Lord Chancellor Somers, and that of Alexander by the excellent John Evelyn; while others were made by men who, if not famous, are at least well remembered by the lovers of the literature of the time,—as that of Numa by Sir Paul Rycaut, the Turkey merchant, and the continuer of Dr. Johnson's favorite history of the Turks,—that of Otho by Pope's friend, the medical poet, Dr. Garth,—that of Solon by Creech, the translator of Lucretius,—that of Lysander by the Honorable Charles Boyle, whose name is preserved in the alcohol of Bentley's classical satire,—and that of Themistocles by Edward, the son of Sir Thomas Browne.