Books in Brief: Poemata Humanística Decem

Poemata Humanística Decem, edited by Rodney G. Dennis (Harvard College Library, 27 pp., $25, paper)

‘The banks of the Charles teem, it appears, with lovers of Latin verse,” says the introduction to this small gem of a volume. These ten translations of the Neo-Latins, each with the original given, sprang from a 1985 exhibition of Renaissance Latin poetry at Harvard’s Houghton Library. “The translators,” the editor writes, “classicists, poets, librarians, and amateurs, were chosen with a strict rigor not unmixed with the power of affection.” Among them are John Updike, man of letters; David Ferry, poet; editor Dennis, librarian (at the Houghton Library); and Mason Hammond, classicist. Here we are fortunate to have ten Latin poems fondly Englished— multae sagittae “pharetra conservavit in aurea.”

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Herbert A. Kenny

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Poemata Humanística Decem, edited by Rodney G. Dennis (Harvard College Library, 27 pp., $25, paper)

‘The banks of the Charles teem, it appears, with lovers of Latin verse,” says the introduction to this small gem of a volume. These ten translations of the Neo-Latins, each with the original given, sprang from a 1985 exhibition of Renaissance Latin poetry at Harvard’s Houghton Library. “The translators,” the editor writes, “classicists, poets, librarians, and amateurs, were chosen with a strict rigor not unmixed with the power of affection.” Among them are John Updike, man of letters; David Ferry, poet; editor Dennis, librarian (at the Houghton Library); and Mason Hammond, classicist. Here we are fortunate to have ten Latin poems fondly Englished— multae sagittae “pharetra conservavit in aurea.”