Volume 7 is The Confessions of St. Augustine and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, both of which I acquired in hard copy.

The Confessions is pretty much what you'd expect; it's the story of St. Augustine's life from his birth to shortly after his conversion from Manichaesm into Christianity, as well as a couple of of bonus chapters on the subject of Creation and Genesis.

I used a relatively old translation by E. B. Pusey, which was somewhat dry and tiring to read unfortunately, but it was still well worth reading. At some point I think I'll try to track down The City of God and read that as well.

The Imitation of Christ is essentially a series of notes on how to live for young monastics. Many parts of it are still applicable to non-monastics, but that was the intended audience of Brother Thomas, and it shows through on occasion.

I used the fairly modern translation by William C. Creasy, which I think may have been a mistake. He favoured a very simplified style of language, which suffered the failing of many "simply" translations of complex works: it's often rather ugly, and reading ugly prose is tiring in it's own way.

As well as that according to his introduction he deliberately set out to translate it in a manner compatible with modern post-Vatican II Catholic theology; he claimed in the Introduction that he only did so to the extent necessary to make up for the modern lack of understanding of the context to which Brother Thomas would have been writing, but I as a reader am left not knowing what he might have changed.

He gives this example in the introduction of how he changed the translation of one particular sentence. Early in the book Brother Thomas says "This is the highest wisdom: through contempt of the world to aspire to the kingdom of heaven." which apparently and "informed reader" would understand as (and Creasy translates as) "This is the highest wisdom: to see the world as it truly is, fallen and fleeting; to love the world not for its own sake, but for God's; and to direct all your effort toward achieving the kingdom of heaven."

This may be a reasonable opinion as to what an "informed reader" would get out of that passage, but it is just Creasy's opinion. Essentially we're viewing the work through the lens of Creasy's personal theology and understanding of medieval philosophy.

Moving on from the questions about the translation, I found Book 4: The Book of the Sacrament the most interesting. It showed a different, and far more serious attitude towards communion than I am used to from the more easy-going Protestantism I grew up with. And an attitude I find myself starting to move towards more and more.

Volume 8 is various ancient Greek plays. I modified the list a little based on what I had print copies of, but I ended up reading:

• Seven against Thebes by Aeschylus; I forget which translation
• Hecabe, Electra, and Heracles by Euripides and translated by Philip Vellacott, which I had in hard-copy
• The Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles and translated by F. Storr
• The Acharnians, The Clouds, and Lysistrata by Aristophanes and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein, also in hard-copy

Seven against Thebes was the dullest of the plays, and covered some of the same events as the Oedipus Trilogy. It appears that I didn't even keep a copy of the ebook. It probably was not the best choice for a singly play of Aeschylus, but it's what I ended up with.

The tragedies of Euripides where a step up, but really there's not much to say about them. They where entertaining, and worth reading for the window into a different world, and different world-view they offer though.

The Oedipus Trilogy, AKA the Theban Plays, is actually three unrelated plays by the same playwright (Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone), which where not intended as a trilogy, but are often combined since they deal with the same characters, and the later two are very definitely dealing with the carry-on effects of the first. I'd say these where my favourite of the Greek theatre that I have read, and Antigone is probably my favourite of the three. If you're only going to read a little bit of Greek theatre go with these ones.

The Comedies of Aristophanes I didn't like as much as the tragedies, interestingly my favourite was The Clouds, which is the most tragic of the three.

The most interesting observation to come out of these was how much of what would be considered gross-out humour in modern times they had. Fart-jokes, poop-jokes, and sex-jokes all abound; Lysistrata has two groups of old folk (one of men and one of women) have a battle-of-the-sexes in song, in which their genitalia feature heavily, any stage directions in the plays are apparently guesses from modern scholars, but I'm pretty sure it's generally accepted that at least the old men strip off during the song, perhaps the old women as well.

My dislike of such humour quite probably contributed to my poor opinion of these plays, so people who like that sort of humour may find them more entertaining.

First a short story: The Current Refugee Crisis by Clark over at PopeHat. (Courtesy of Vox Day)

Particularly for any European readers: A Petition regarding firearms in the EU.

Finally: Apparently Today is Poul Anderson's birthday; grab one of his books to celebrate. I haven't read heaps of his writing, but what I have read has been universally excellent.

The fifth volume consists of the Essays and English Traits Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the sixth volume is the Poems and Songs of Robert Burns.

Good grief, Mr. Emerson's essays are boring. They seem to essentially cover the basic doctrines of his pseudo-religion, which consists of pantheism and reincarnation. I can't give the complete details, but nothing in the first third motivated me to look into it in any more depth. Eventually I decided that if I've finished a quarter of the work and don't want to read the rest I can skip ahead. English Traits on the other hand is quite interesting, it presents a view of England of the early 19th century which is worth reading.

Burns' Poems aren't too bad, but they suffer from being in the Scots dialect, and having a lot of them in the work, far too many to read in one go, so I also only read around a third of it. I may return to some of his poetry in future, but for now I'm moving on.

The fourth volume of the Harvard Classics consists of the collected poetry of Milton. I read this in three separate volumes: Minor Poems (I commend this edition due to it's extensive and well linked footnotes), Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained.

There's not much to say about these; having read them I can see why Milton is considered to be one of the greatest English authors of all time, even if for myself I lack the taste for poetry and knowledge of the many allusions he makes to truly appreciate them to their full.

I did appreciate seeing a different view on the common Bible stories that Milton was retelling though; both the fact that he essentially interpreted the regaining of Paradise to have happened during Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness rather than on the cross, and that his interpretation of the first sin, and the relationship to Adam, Eve, and authority in inter-sexual relationships was very foreign to most modern eyes.

We're now moving on to Emerson; I've actually started already, and so far I'm not a fan of the Essays (though I'll reserve judgement until I've read a bit more), but English Traits sounds rather interesting.

The third volume of the Harvard Classics is The Essays and The New Atlantis by Francis Bacon, Areopagitica and the Of Education by John Milton, and Religio Medici by Sir Thomas Browne.

I have an old Everyman's Library edition of Milton's prose, so I read the two works of Milton from that. Areopagitica is available from both Gutenberg and the University of Adelaide, but neither seem to have Of Education, so you might need to look elsewhere for it.

First up: Why do I blame the Romans? Both Bacon and Browne often quote Latin phrases without giving translations, so I got distracted by starting to learn Latin. I've at least got to the point where I can figure out the number and part of speech of most words, but I'm still very definitely just beginning to learn the language. I'll probably keep it up as I go along.

The order of these three works doesn't really matter all that much, and I'd recommend The Essays as the most interesting single work. Some of them are really only relevant to wealthy medieval Britons (Of Gardens for example), but they are all short, and they give you a bit of a picture of at least that part of the medieval culture.

Areopagitica is essentially an open letter to the English Parliament on the subject of censorship of books, on the ground that it (censorship) is insulting, and essentially useless since false heresies and cults more often spring up due to teaching in person rather than in writing.

I did notice a couple of things that amused in it that should be noted:

Firstly, Milton spends a lot of effort on praising the English Parliament in the introduction to his Tractate; If any modern citizen spent so long flattering the Parliament before getting to the point his audience would probably stop reading before he got to the point.

Secondly, when he was talking about the history of censorship he brought up Athens (the homes of many of the greatest western philosophers) as an example of a society that didn't censor their residents, except in matters of libel and atheism. The interesting matter is not so much that the Athenians censored atheists, but that it was seen as quite reasonable: deviants, heretics, and pagans sure, but atheists are just too much.

This censorship of atheism in Athens is particularly interesting in light of the fact that some Atheists try to claim Socrates as an Atheist, or at least a forefather to them, but turning the young away from the gods was the crime for which he was charged, and if you remember The Apology from the last volume, you'll know that he vehemently denied any part in it.

Anyhow next on our agenda is Milton's poetry.

Volume 2 of the Harvard Classics consists of The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo by Plato; The Golden Sayings by Epictetus; and The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

If you are going to read these I recommend reading them in the order listed above. The three Dialogs of Plato form a narration of Socrates' trial and execution, while Epictetus refers back to Socrates, and Marcus Aurelius refers back to both Socrates and Epictetus. All the works could probably be read alone, though the dialogs are short, so you might as well read all three, but that's the preferable ordering (and the order given by the Harvard Classics as well I believe).

Also the editions of the Dialogs I mentioned above all have a rather long winded summary/introduction by the translator, which explains what the arguments are in a slightly abbreviated (they are still nearly as long as the actual dialogs) and simplified form. I didn't end up reading this for Phaedo, but you might want to read them if you have trouble with the main works, and the first few paragraphs of them give a bit of background info which is worth reading regardless.

Crito by Plato is probably the most interesting of all the works, and the shortest. It's a discussion about how Socrates believes (or Plato wants to portray him as believing) that he is obligated to his country to obey it's laws even when he disagrees with them (in this case they are putting him to death, so you know he takes it seriously) due to the benefits he received from the state earlier in life, and due to the fact that he had by choice spent almost all his life, even more so than usual for his countrymen, in Athens, which meant that he had essentially agreed that the laws of the land where good. Therefore he was obligated to obey the laws whether he now agreed with them or not.

I disagree with with his conclusion, afterall as he said in the same dialog, '[W]hy ... should we care about the opinion of the many?', and Athens at this point was a form of democracy, which means it's laws are simply the opinions of the many. Sometimes the majority is right, sometimes wrong.

That's not to say that some of his other secondary reasons (that escape would put his friends and family at odds with the government; that he was an old man anyhow; that he would need to leave Athens, and had no interest in doing so) where not potentially valid reasons on their own, but the central reason does not convince me. Regardless I found this the most interesting work, since it got me thinking about the argument it presented.

If you where only going to read one of the works listed I would recommend this one, though the other two dialogs would be helpful as well, since as I mentioned above they form a narration of Socrates' death, and Phaedo has some interesting arguments about immortality as well.

Of the two Stoics (Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are both important members of the Stoic school of philosophy), I preferred Epictetus. Marcus Aurelius was repetitive, both of himself and of Epictetus. I'm sure for someone who really wanted to study Stoic philosophy he would be quite interesting, but I found him somewhat boring and long winded, though with a few interesting bits and pieces.

I think I might have done better to read some of the Epicurean school of philosophy instead of Marcus Aurelius. Still it was interesting to compare and contrast two individuals on opposite ends of the social and wealth scale; Epictetus was a slave, and Marcus Aurelius was an Emperor, yet they both had essentially the same opinions about ambition, and being content with whatever happens.

One interesting thing I noted was that there was no arguments about "fairness" recorded from either. Now of course, I wouldn't expect Stoics to complain about the universe being unfair, and Stoics weren't the majority in the communities at the time. But what I noticed, particularly in Epictetus, who is often responding to other peoples arguments or requests for advice, was that they didn't seem to be arguing against the idea that the universe, or the gods, or fate is unfair to make some people poor and others rich. They where rather arguing against ambition and discontentment.

I can't imagine a modern Stoic doing much except arguing against the idea that the universe should be fair, and that it's bad that it isn't. Epictetus would say things like why would you obsess about being successful? don't you know that the rich have their own burdens, and the universe specifically designed you for your place in it?, but I would have expected to read things like why worry about whether it is fair for you or others to be poor? don't you know that the rich have their own burdens, and the universe specifically designs each person for their place in it? from a Stoic writing for modern audiences.

It may be nothing, perhaps I'm just noticing a difference in wording rather than an actual difference in thought, but it makes me wonder if perhaps our modern obsession with "Fairness", which we often assume is an innate feature of the human psyche, may rather be a cultural artifact. (perhaps related to Marxism?)

Anyhow, if you want to shorten this volume, my recommendation would be to skip The Meditations, which makes up about 50% of the whole volume, and doesn't add that much new to Epictetus.

Onwards to Volume 3: Bacon, Milton, and Browne, or the English philosophy of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Note: If you want to read through the Harvard Classics yourself, it's entirely Public Domain now, and Project Gutenberg has a "bookshelf" for it (though I'm using a lot of ebooks from eBooks@Adelaide instead), and MobileRead has each volume available as a single file download, which I'll probably use for a couple of volumes that aren't suited to being downloaded as individual ebooks.

My immediate thought is "Poor man, from what I understand being stung to death by a jellyfish is a pretty painful way to go. Best remove it from the lagoon before someone else gets stung." Sherlock Holmes takes 15 or 16 pages and over a week to come to the same conclusion.