LETTERS A “Faultless” Book?

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29192, 30 April 1960, Page 3

LETTERS A “Faultless” Book?

Sir,—l have read Professor Garrett Mattingly’s book, “The Defeat of the Spanish Annada,” reviewed in your issue of March 19, with profit and enjoyment, but not without irritation. I would protest vigorously against the uncritical and gushing nature of the excerpts from rather well-known English reviewers, or reviewing journals, which are printed on the back of the dust-cover. The following four examples may suffice: “Transcending the barriers of time” (Times Literary Supplement); “a beautifully proportioned and executed book ... by the best sixteenth century historian in America” (A. L. Bowse); “a rare and wonderful book” (Sir J. E. Neale); “a faultless book . . . one which most historians would have given half their, working lives to have written” (J. A. Plumb). If faultless books exist, this is not one of them. On page 160 a prophecy of disasters due to occur in the year 1588, written in Latin elegiacs by an astronomer known as “Regiomontanus,” is quoted by Professor Mattingly. The lines are not printed as elegiacs;' the fifth line of the Latin is missing altogether; in the fourth line occur the words “et secum tristia fata trahet” (“and with it gloomy fates shall bring”). Here the letter “f” of “fata” has been mistaken for an old-style English “s,” so that the word “fata” appears in the book as a new and wholly non-existent word “sata.” This has been taken to be some sort of an adjective connected with the word “satis” (the meaning of which is known, it seems, even at Columbia University); and the translation we are given is: “brings with it woe enough”! “Cuncta mundi,” in what is the sixth but should be the seventh line, is blithely mis-translated as “all the world," whilst “imperia ” which should go with “cuncta," is allotted to the following sentence. The word “ibunt" (future tense) is printed “ibant” (imperfect), and “decrescent” (future) appears in the book in the astonishing forin of “decresunt”; which for good measure is repeated in the text on page 162. To cut this ghastly story short, there are nine elementary errors, some of them real I monstrosities, in these seven lines, lit may be that neither Mr Plumb of Cambridge, England, nor -the best sixteenth-century historian in America happens to be conversant with the Latin tongue. In that case it is regrettable that the latter should not have sought informed assistance in transcribing and translating ife “The author of this book,” says the “Spectator," "wears his great learning lightly.” So far as Latin is concerned he wears it much too lightly. To me the colloquialisms, also, in which from time to time he indulges, do not always commend themselves: on page 212, line 18, there is an error of taste, in that direction, which needs to be seen to be believed. There are times, mostly in the 'earlier chapters, when the punctuation, or the lack of it, is irritating and confusing. I wish, however, to make it clear that I am not condemning, nor wantonly disparaging, this book. These criticisms apart, and certain others also, it is in fact both valuable and interesting. I would not have missed reading it. But so far as I am concerned, these reviewers have done it ill service with their gushing and uncritical laudations, whilst to call it “faultless” is of course just plain silly. —Yours, etc., L. G. POCOCK.