Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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But why Schieble should have reprinted Alethophilus' translation is not clear, when in 1781 a new translation into German, with critical notes and valuable suggestions for emending the text, had appeared by Dieterich Tiedemann (Berlin and Stettin, in 8vo), entitled Hermes Trismegists Pcemander, oder von der gottlichen Macht und Weisheit, a rare book which, already in 1827, Baumgarten-Crusius 2 laments
1 Part of the full title runs: K. W.-S. d. Wissenschaften, Mysterien, Theosophie, gottlichen und morgenlandischen Magie, Naturkrafte, hermet. u. inagnet. Phil., Kabbala, u. and. hohern Kentnissen, and much more in the same strain, but I have no doubt the reader has already had enough of it. From 1855 to 1857 fourteen parts appeared, mostly taken up with German translations of Hermes, of Agrippa's Philosophia Occulta from the Latin, and of The Telescope of Zoroaster from the French.
2 Op. inf. cit., p. 10.
as almost unfindable in the republic of letters, and of which the British Museum possesses no copy.1
It is remarkable that of a work which exhausted so many editions in translation and was evidently received with such great enthusiasm, there have been so few editions of the text, and that for two centuries and a quarter2 no attempt was made to collate the different MSS. and editions, until in 1854 Gustav Parthey printed a critical text of the fourteen pieces of " Poemandres," at Berlin, under the title Sermetis Trismegisti Posmander, to which he appended a Latin translation based on the original version of Ficino successively revised by de Foix and Patrizzi. Parthey's promise to edit reliqua Hermetis scripta has not been fulfilled, and no one else has so far attempted this most necessary task.
Reitzenstein's (p. 322) opinion of Parthey's text, however, is very unfavourable. In the first place, Parthey took Patrizzi's arbitrary alterations as a true tradition of the text ; in the second, he himself saw neither of the MSS. on which he says he relies. The first of these was very carelessly copied for him and carelessly used by him; while the second, which was copied by D. Hamm, is very corrupt owing to very numerous "corrections" and interpolations by a later hand — all of which Parthey has adopted as ancient readings. His text, therefore, concludes Eeitzenstein, is doubly falsified — a very discouraging judgment for lovers of accuracy.
In 1866 there appeared at Paris, in 8vo, a complete translation in French of the Trismegistic treatises and fragments by Louis Me*nard, entitled Hermh Trisme'giste, preceded by an interesting study on the origin of the Hermetic books, of which a second edition was printed in 1867. This is beyond question the most sympathetic version that we at present possess.
1 I have, therefore, not been able to avail myself of Tiedemann's labours. R. 322 speaks highly of them.
2 The last edition prior to Parthey's was the reprint of Flusaas" text, at Cologne in 1630, appended to Rossel's lucubrations.
Everard's version of the " Poemandres " being reprinted in 1884 by Fryar of Bath, the rest of the treatises were retranslated by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland from Mdnard's French version (including his notes), and appeared in 1885 (in 4to), published by Fryar, but bearing a publisher's name in India, under the general title The Hermetic Works : The Virgin of the World of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. Meantime, in 1882, J. D. Chambers had pub lished (at Edinburgh, in 8vo) a crabbed and slavishly literal translation of the "Poemandres," together with the Excerpts from Stobeeus and the Notices of Hermes in the Fathers, with an introductory Preface, under the title, The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian Neoplatonist. Indeed, the loose and erroneous version of Everard is far more comprehensible than this fantastically literal translation.