SIKES, E.E., — Lucretius. Poet and Philosopher.

At the University Press, Cambridge, 1936. IX,187p. Original green cloth. Spine gilt titled. Spine discoloured. Lower corner front cover bit bumped. Ex libris Edward John Kenney glued to pasted woen en paper. ‘It is pleasant to read a study of Lucretius in which for once the poet is not allowed to be overridden by the philosopher. (…) He very properly refuses to be dismayed by those technical passages which some writers have found inescapably frigid and amorphous, remarking of them that formally they are pure prose, but that they are to be judged ‘not in themselves, but in relation to the whole poem of which they are a part.’ That is sane doctrine, and Mr. Sikes develops it further in a valuable chapter on the art of Lucretius, written with much penetration and sound common-sense. (…) There are some interesting pages here on the choice of words and on the development of hexameter rhythm (…). An impression of sincerity and mature reflexion marks the whole book, and, as the foot-notes and other references show, Mr. Sikes casts his net wide. Some admirable translations are interspersed, mostly in blank verse (…) and in an appendix there are three versions into Lucretian hexameters, two from Wordsworth and one from Matthew Arnold, both choses for their affinities with Lucretius.’ (R.G. AUSTIN in The Classical Review, 1936, p.132).