NATURE 



185 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1912. 



NATURE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 

 The Love of Nature among the Romans during 

 the Later Decades of the Republic and the First 

 Century of the Empire. By Sir A. Geikie, 

 K.C.B., F.R.S. Pp. xi + 394. (London: John 

 Murray, 1912.) Price 9*. net. 



THIS is indeed a delightful book, full of con- 

 tagious zest and charm. The love of 

 nature, the love of science, the love of the best 

 literature both of the past and the present, all 

 combine to make it so. It represents the happy 

 adventure of one of our very foremost men of 

 science, the President of the Royal Society, and the 

 doyen of British geology, into the realm of classical 

 scholarship and Roman literature. The "classics," 

 as they are commonly called among those who love 

 them and write about them, suffer too often by 

 being made a business of. The affection 

 of the schoolmaster or the classical professor is 

 ; discounted as being professional, and its sincerity 

 is a little doubted. It is only when some old 

 statesman or soldier, some lawyer or physician, 

 some original modern poet who has made his own 

 name, after experience of the world, turns 

 again, as Cardinal Newman in the famous passage 

 in the Grammar of Assent describes him doing, 

 to the Homer or Horace of his schoolboy hours, 

 hat we feel that the classics are being taken at 

 heir real value and that their natural undying 

 :harm is once more powerfully vindicated. 



Specially is this the case when their beauty is 

 ivowed, quod minime reris, by a man of science. 

 Jut, indeed, there should be no feud between the 

 5ve of natural knowledge and of literary art, 

 .nd, above all, of poetry, the best of which rests 

 ^o much upon the close observation and faithful 

 ^resentment of nature. There used not to be such 

 . feud. It may be hoped that we are returning to 

 more healthy condition both of science and of 

 cholarship when a book such as this comes into 

 leing. What were its occasion and origin Sir 

 ^.rchibald Geikie tells us in his modest, pleasant 

 oreface. He was asked by the Classical Associa- 

 ilion to become their president, and he chose, he 

 Ijells us, for his address a subject which " seemed 

 ip some measure to combine the classical interests 

 pf the members with his own deep love of nature." 

 this book is the expansion of the address which 

 ke then gave — an address which came, perhaps, 

 |s somewhat of a surprise to some, but not to 

 Ihose who knew Sir Archibald well or who re- 

 liembered his Romanes Lecture at Oxford, or his 

 |Ook on "Landscape in History." 

 |i Such readers will not be surprised to hear that 



\ NO. 2242, VOL. go] 



this new volume is excellently written. The great 

 masters of science have usually written well, but 

 this is more than well written. It is eminently 

 readable, in a style at once lucid and sustained, 

 and sympathetic with its subject. Indeed, it might 

 be used to point the moral that an acquaintance 

 with the masterpieces of antiquity is not without 

 its uses to the modern student or exponent of 

 science. 



What may surprise, is that the President of the 

 Royal Society should prove himself so well in- 

 formed a scholar and, to use the classical phrase, 

 so " ripe " a scholar. For not only is he w-ell 

 "posted up," not only has he read his monographs, 

 his Pelham on the Italian pascua, or his 

 Boissier's " Varron " — a rare book — but, still 

 more, to the accuracy and completeness which his 

 science might teach him, he adds a judgment, 

 tact, and taste, pre-eminently considered, mellow, 

 and mature. 



It may be noted that he has for the most part 

 translated himself, and often into verse, the many 

 quotations which he makes from the Latin poets. 

 This is a bold course, but justified both by 

 the general good level of the renderings, and still 

 more because it secures two advantages, the 

 first, that of exactness of understanding for the 

 writer himself ; the second, that of consistency of 

 presentment for his readers. 



The volume, then, is essentially a "humane" 

 book. It is written with real feeling and con 

 amore. Geology, notwithstanding its " stony 

 names," of which Tennyson made such ingenious 

 poetic use. 



Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, 

 Amygdaloid and trachyte, 



is really a humane study, for it deals with the 

 structure of the dwelling in which we live, the 

 history and character of the home of our race so 

 far back as we can trace its chronicle. 



When Sir Archibald looks at the literature, 

 the poetry, the mode of life, the tastes of 

 the Romans with the "modern eye," the scientific 

 eye, he naturally first sees Italy as a geologist, 

 and, so doing, throws a new light on the figures 

 and epithets, the descriptions and the criticisms, 

 with which the scholar is so familiar. 



Italy, the Italy of Cicero and Virgil, the 



Magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus 

 Magna virum, 



was always, in the broad geological and geo- 

 graphical sense, the Italy she is now ; her kindly 

 and temperate skies with their indulgentia caeli; 

 her double sea, largely the secret of her skies ; 

 her northern wall and spinal chain of moun- 

 tains ; her lakes ; her short rivers, here torrent, 



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