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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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