THE END.
FORSYTH'S "CICERO."
A New Life of Cicero.
BY WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C.
With Twenty Illustrations. 2 vols. crown octavo. Printed on tinted and laid paper. Price, $5.00.
The object of this work is to exhibit Cicero not merely as a Statesman and an Orator, but as he was at home in the relations of private life, as a Husband, a Father, a Brother, and a Friend. His letters are full of interesting details, which enable us to form a vivid idea of how the old Romans lived 2,000 years ago; and the Biography embraces not only a History of Events, as momentous as any in the annals of the world, but a large amount of Anecdote and Gossip, which amused the generation that witnessed the downfall of the Republic.
The London Athenæuem says: "Mr. Forsyth has rightly aimed to set before us a portrait of Cicero in the modern style of biography, carefully gleaning from his extensive correspondence all those little traits of character and habit which marked his private and domestic life. These volumes form a very acceptable addition to the classic library. The style is that of a scholar and a man of taste."
From the Saturday Review:—"Mr. Forsyth has discreetly told his story, evenly and pleasantly supplied it with apt illustrations from modern law, eloquence, and history, and brought Cicero as near to the present time as the differences of age and manners warrant. * * * These volumes we heartily recommend as both a useful and agreeable guide to the writings and character of one who was next in intellectual and political rank to the foremost man of all the world, at a period when there were many to dispute with him the triple crown of forensic, philosophic, and political composition."
"A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, Mr. Forsyth seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the precise attitude which it behoves a biographer to take when narrating the life, the personal life, of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth produces what we venture to say will become one of the classics of English biographical literature, and will be welcomed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions and of no profession at all."—London Quarterly.
"This book is a valuable contribution to our Standard Literature. It is a work which will aid our progress towards the truth; it lifts a corner of the veil which has hung over the scenes and actors of times so full of ferment, and allows us to catch a glimpse of the stage upon which the great drama was played."—North American Review.
Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price.
LORD DERBY'S "HOMER."
The Iliad of Homer.
RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE BY EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY.
From the fifth London Edition.
Two volumes, royal octavo, on tinted paper. Price $7.50 per vol.
Extracts from Notices and Reviews from the English Quarterlies, &c.
"The merits of Lord Derby's translation may be summed up in one word: "it is eminently attractive; it is instinct with life; it may be read with fervent interest; it is immeasurably nearer than Pope to the text of the original. * * * We think that Lord Derby's translation will not only be read, but read over and over again. * * * Lord Derby has given to England a version far more closely allied to the original, and superior to any that has yet been attempted in the blank verse of our language."—Edinburgh Review, January 1865.
"As often as we return from even the best of them (other translations) to the translation before us, we find ourselves in a purer atmosphere of taste. We find more spirit, more tact in avoiding either trivial or conceited phrases, and altogether a presence of merits, and an absence of defects which continues, as we read, to lengthen more and more the distance between Lord Derby and the foremost of his competitors."—London Quarterly Review, January, 1865.
"While the versification of Lord Derby is such as Pope himself would have admired, his Iliad is in all other essentials superior to that of his great rival. For the rest, if Pope is dethroned what remains? * * * It is the Iliad we would place in the hands of English readers as the truest counterpart of the original, the nearest existing approach to a reproduction of that original's matchless feature."—Saturday Review.
"Among those curiosities of literature which are also its treasures, Lord Derby's translation of Homer must occupy a very conspicuous place. * * * Lord Derby's work is, on the whole, more remarkable for the constancy of its excellence and the high level which it maintains throughout, than for its special bursts of eloquence. It is uniformly worthy of itself and its author."—The Reader.
"Whatever may be the ultimate fate of this poem—whether it take sufficient hold of the public mind to satisfy that demand for a translation of Homer which we have alluded to, and thus become a permanent classic of the language, or whether it give place to the still more perfect production of some yet unknown poet—it must equally be considered a splendid performance; and for the present we have no hesitation in saying that it is by far the best representation of Homer's Iliad in the English language."
AMERICAN NOTICES.
The Publishers Circular says:—At the advanced age of sixty-five, the Earl of Derby, leader of the Tory party in England, has published a translation of Homer, in blank verse. Nearly all the London critics unite in declaring, with The Times, "that it is by far the best representation of Homer's 'Iliad' in the English language." His purpose was to produce a translation, and not a paraphrase—fairly and honestly giving the sense of every passage and of every line. Without doubt the greatest of all living British orators, he has now shown high poetic power as well as great scholarship.
From the New York World:—"The reader of English, who seeks to know what Homer really was, and in what fashion he thought and felt and wrote, will owe to Lord Derby his first honest opportunity of doing so. The Earl's translation is devoid alike of pretension and of prettiness. It is animated in movement, simple and representative to phraseology, breezy in atmosphere, if we may so speak, and pervaded by a refinement of taste which is as far removed from daintiness or effeminacy as can well be imagined."
Copies sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of price.