Classics From Everyman

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30325, 28 December 1963, Page 3

Classics From Everyman

The most notable of this year’s reprints in Messrs Dent’s Everyman Library is undoubtedly the four-volume edition of Vasari’s “Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects.” Giogio Vasari was a pointer himself, but was more esteemed in his own time as an architect. He would have been but a minor figure in his century, however, had he not produced his work of biography and criticism in 1550. Ever since then, Visari’s “Lives” has been the delight of all who study the art of Italy in its greatest age. The translation used in the Everyman series is that by A. B. Hinds, which has been revised, and to which fuller notes have been added, where more modern scholarship affords further information. There is a new introduction to the work written by the well-known critic William Gaunt. Vasari is a most entertaining writer, with a great gift for setting down an unexpected comment. A single sentence on page 77 of the first volume will provide an illustration. “Giotto has also expressed with great realism a man afflicted with sores, as all the women who are about him. disgusted by the stench, turn away with various contortions in the most graceful manner imaginable.” Two volumes of Aristotle appear for the first time in the Everyman Library. The “Ethics’’ is one of the greatest works of moral philosophy and also one of the most difficult for the unlearned reader. The editor of this edition makes extensive use of headings and subheadings in order to clarify the course of the discussion. The “Ethics” will never be easy reading; but it is hard to see how this ancient wisdom could be made more readily available. Aristotle's “Poetics” is the fountainhead of literary criticism. Many translations exist, some of them more elegantly turned than the present one. Neverthless, the workmanlike plainness which marks the Everyman version will commend it to many. The volume is invaluable to students in that it includes Longinus “on the sublime” and the treatise of Demetrius “On Style.” Another work of a somewhat philosophical kind in the series is Gracian’s “Oracle.” Bultasar Grecian was a Spanish Jesuit who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century. His “oracle” is an interesting work—a handbook for princes and magnates conceived in much the same spirit as Bacon’s “Essays." Grecian aims at producing one who knows how to be all things to all men—“a discreet Proteus, a scholar among scholars, a saint among saints.” His handbook for polished hypocrites makes agreeable reading. The two lives of Sir Thomas More now printed together as volume 19 of the series are of some importance to students of sixteeth century prose. William Roper and Nicholas Ha-rpsfield, who wrote these biographies, were intimate with More; but their

works were not easily obtainable until they appeared some 30 years ago in the Early English Test Society editions. The present versions are based upon these scholarly works. They present an attractive picture of one of the most remarkable men of his age, and may be read with profit together with R. W. Chambers’s great modern biography of the saint and statesman.

The next prose work in this batch of reprints is the volume containing R. L. Stevenson’s “Verginibus Puerisque” and "Familiar Studies of Men and Books.” Stevenson’s earlier essays are now felt by some readers to be studied and indeed artificial in manner; but it is worth while remarking that there is a certain pleasure to be derived from what is after all so brilliantly written. It is flattering that Stevenson took so much trouble to please; and in a’dition his subject matter, as in “The English Admirals” and “Some Portraits by Raeburn’’ is sometimes of first-rate importance in its own right. Herbert Spencer's “Essay on Education” was first printed by Messrs Dent in the Everyman Library as long ago as 1911. It is now reissued in the larger format and offered to a new generation of readers. Spencer’s ideas, so far as they applied, have now been pretty fully incorporated into educational theory. Scientific studies, for instance, are all important and the type of elegant literary education that was still admired in Spencer’s younger days is now a thing Of the past. The book will always have some historical importance; but now that his ideas are no longer novel, Spencer's lack of distinction as a writer is what becomes increasingly obvious. The latest Everyman Edition of Coleridge's “Poems” bears the number 43; but it has been compiled according to a completely new plan. The editor, John Beer, is well-known as an authority on the romantic movement in England. He has not only i.iade the selection —a generous one; the book has 357 pages—but also writes a ;’age or so of introduction to every important poem or group of poems. This is a new departure in the Everyman Library, and it is one (hat will be welcomed by most readers. A volume of plays completes this section of new reprints in the Everyman Library. “Early Seventeeth Century Drama” is a useful collection, although the choice of plays is conventional. On the other hand, beginners will be pleased to have “The Shoemaker’s Holiday.” “The Woman Killed With Kindness” and “A New Way To Pay Old Debts” in such a convenient form. The book also contains two plays not quite so well-known in “The Changeling" and John Marston’s “Malcontent.” Professor R. G. Lawrence's footnotes are very helpful for difficult phrases and for historical references.