Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men. Corrected from the Greek and revised by A. H. Clough. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1877.
WE have received a reprint in one volume of the edition of the "Lives," edited by the poet Clough, and published in five volumes in 1859. The translation is an old one of the seventeenth century, but it has been considered to be a better translation than could now be made; in reviving it, however, Clough succeeded in correcting many inaccuracies and mistranslations without marring its inimitable style. At the time of its first appearance the revision was highly praised, and the work may be said to have altogether superseded the inferior translation of the one then in common use, Langhorne's. Its republication, in a more convenient and less costly form, will be of peculiar interest to those of us who are familiar with the advanced art electives, since Plutarch is so frequently referred to that it may almost be called the text-book of those courses; it will be remembered, too, that the Plutarch always alluded to in the art lectures is the one edited by Clough.
It is perhaps a fact worth mentioning that, although most of the revision was done in England, the idea was conceived and the work begun by Clough here in Cambridge during his brief residence in America.
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