Plutarch's Morals

Plutarch’s Morals. Translated from the Greek by several Hands. Corrected and revised by WILLIAM W. GOODWIN, Ph. D., Professor of Greek Literature in Harvard University. With an Introduction by RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Five Volumes. 8vo. Boston : Little, Brown, & Co.

THIS regal edition, just issued from Wilson’s press in Cambridge, contrasts very strangely with the old London copy we have been accustomed to read. The English edition we refer to was printed in 1695, and is marked Third Edition, corrected and amended. It is inscribed by one M. Morgan in a dedicatory epistle, with “the lowest Submission To William, by Divine Providence Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Private and Metropolitan of all England.” M. Morgan tells William Canterbury that he, William, “can illustrate even the meanest person and make him considerable.” M. tells William also that the “several Hands ” who have made the translation “with the humblest prostrations of reverence, kneel to Your Grace and beg that you will bless our Persons,” etc., etc., etc. All this sort of nonsense has long ago been buried in the dust, and Mr. Emerson comes forward in his sturdy fashion to introduce old Plutarch to the readers of 1871. The essay, which preludes the subject-matter of the first volume, is admirable. No man could have lifted the curtain more graciously and introduced his author with more sense and sensibility. It certainly means excellence when Professor Goodwin is willing to re-edit so old a book as Plutarch’s “ Morals,” and Mr. Emerson is willing to pause in his studies and compose such a paper as he has prefixed to this new Boston edition. We take it for granted that this work will be an addition to the readable literature of the century. The old editions were full of errors, and the new editor very modestly explains his position by saying that he has endeavored to make each treatise what the original translator would have made it, if he had carried out his own purpose conscientiously and thoroughly. “Several Hands” have had more than justice done them by Professor Goodwin. Mr. Emerson says: “ It is a service to our Republic to publish a book that can force ambitious young men, before they mount the platform of the county conventions, to read Plutarch’s ‘Apothegms of Great Commanders.’” He also Says Plutarch’s popularity will return in rapid cycles ; that his sterling values will presently recall the eye and thought of the best minds ; that his books will be reprinted and read anew by coming generations, and that he will be perpetually rediscovered from time to time as long as books last. And no one can doubt the wisdom of these assertions who opens this treasury of “ Morals ” and reads such chapters as “Concerning the Cure of Anger,” “On the Training of Children,” “Of the Tranquillity of the Mind,” “ Rules for the Preservation of Health,” “ Concerning the Virtues of Women,” “Of Garrulity,” or “Talkativeness,” “Of Envy and Hatred,” “ Of Curiosity,” “ Of Fortune,” “ Of Fate,” and so on.

When old Sir Thomas North put his hand to the translation of Plutarch’s “ Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans,” in 1693, he was unwittingly assisting William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon. Who can tell what a fortunate help may be rendered to America by the reproduction of these “ Morals,” now for the first time presented to the New World in an edition of its own ?