Note 261c — VIII. LORD ACTON’S LIST OF THE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS
Reading edition
There have been many translations of Catullus. One, by Sir Richard Burton, was issued by Leonard Smithers in 1894. In Bohn’s Library there is a prose translation by Walter K. Kelly. Professor Robinson Ellis made a verse translation that has been widely praised. Grant Allen translated the Attis in 1892. On the whole, the English verse translation by Sir Theodore Martin made in 1861 (Blackwood & Son) is far and away the best suited for a first acquaintance with this the ‘tenderest of Roman Poets.’