Walahfried Strabo: Hortulus

Walahfried Strabo: Hortulus, translated by Raef Payne, commentary by Wilfrid Blunt, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Hunt Botanical Library, 1966, pp. xi, 91, illus, $12.00. This publication is number 2 of the Hunt Facsimile Series, edited by George H.M. Lawrence, Director of the Hunt Botanical Library. It is a happy choice, for this poem, written by a monk of Reichenau in the ninth century, has given pleasure to countless readers in the past and is likely to do so for generations to come. The manuscript chosen for reproduction is the Vatican codex Reginensis no. 469, written in a beautiful carolingian script and by no means 'most difficult for anyone but a specialist to read' as Mr. Lawrence says. The book is handsomely produced and would be an ornament to any library. The transcription of the text is excellent though here and there the readings have been improved without any mention being made: for instance, pena, line 119, has been changed to pensa; regi, line 271, to regio; mulcifer, line 298, to mulciber; with several others, whilst the capitula, which precede the poem have been omitted altogether. The translation is quite good. What Helen Waddell would have done with it can best be gauged by comparing her version of the dedication in Mediaeval Latin Lyrics with Mr. Payne's effort. The commentary by Wilfrid Blunt is somewhat lumbering and one feels that he is not at ease in ninth-century company. What is most surprising is that he makes no reference at all to the contemporary herbals from S. Gall, where this manuscript came from, and seems unaware that a comparison of this poem with their contents might be useful. His comment that nothing is known about the fate of Gottschalk after the Synod of Quierzy is quite inexplicable unless he has not read Traube's preface to Gottschalk's poems and Hincmar. Mr. Lawrence's section on the editions of the Hortulus shows us a glimpse of the richness of the Hunt Botanical Library at Pittsburgh, though one or two lapses in proof-reading mar this otherwise welcome list of early printing. All in all the contributors to this volume, including the printers and the binders, should be pleased with the result, as readers will certainly be.