INTRODUCTION
. . . with a real Stoic, like George Long'.[1] He adds: 'the 17th century produced some 26 editions or issues; the eighteenth 58, the 19th 81, while the 20th during the eight years of its existence has already brought forth 28.'
The bare enumeration shows the extraordinary favour which has been paid to Marcus' book. Many great names too are connected with it. Sir Thomas Browne used the Meditations, and refers to it directly in one quaint sentence. The sublime passage in Pascal about the two infinities was probably suggested by Marcus' well-known words.[2] Pope used the Meditations, in Jeremy Collier's translation, for his Essay on Man; Bolingbroke refers to the last chapter, not naming it, in The Spirit of Patriotism: 'Whether the piece be of three or five acts, the part may be long'. Legg reports a lithographed book at Munich containing nearly a hundred pages of selections made by Maximilian the Second, King of Bavaria. But a more famous name connected with the Meditations is that of Frederick the Great of Prussia. He made a paraphrase of its chief doctrines in Le Stoicien, and he continually refers to Marcus in his writings and correspondence.[3] He thought that the book is suited for hours of disappointment and sorrow, to fortify man's courage. Goethe knew the book, and often speaks of it in his correspondence; he was especially interested in Marcus' acknowledgement of indebtedness to his teachers in Book 1. He showed sympathy with Stoical teaching from his early days, and the frequent reminder in his poems that doing, not being, is man's
- ↑ George Long, The Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius Antoninus, 1862; revised 1869; included, with Matthew Arnold's essay, in the York Library, George Bell, 1905. This translation has been of great assistance to me by its scholarly accuracy.
- ↑ 'Quand je considère la petite durée de ma vie, absorbée dans l'éternité précédant et suivant, 205 Brunschvicg', see M. Ant. iv. 3.
- ↑ See Friedrich der Grosse als Philosoph, Ed. Zeller, 1886, pp. 35 sq., 73, 82; and Anmerkungen 15, 116 c, 118, 120 (where are references to the King's correspondence), 174.
