The Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil

Abstract

THERE are many lovers of Virgil who are neither scholars nor botanists, and their number seems to be increasing, just lovers of his poetry, who are content without any great knowledge of grammatical criticism—content with translating quercus and robur By the same word “oak,”for whom tdeda, picea, pinus, abies are equally “fir”or “pine,”though they would, for the most part, hesitate to affirm on the authority of Gallus that “Violets are black and blaeberries (vaccinia) too.”To all such the book now before us, written by a former master at Westminster, who grows Virgilian plants in his English garden, and has travelled in Italy, comes with the promise of help. We hope with its aid to attain to a better understanding and, therefore, to a truer appreciation of the poems, especially of the “Eclogues”and “Georgics,”the country poems. And at first we are not disappointed.

The Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil.

By John Sargeaunt. Pp. vii + 149. (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1920.) Price 6s. net.