Forrest Reid was an Ulster novelist, literary critic and translator, friend of EM Forster and Walter de la Mare. His best known work is "Young Tom", a novel about boyhood. What we have here is a collection of short - sometimes very short - poems from several anthologies spread over 1000 years. The earliest, that of Meleager (between 160 - 130 BC) is now lost, and in his introduction Reid summarises the rather complicated history of what remains to us from the ancient and the medieval world. In making his selection he says he has omitted those which seem to be slight variations on themes already treated or mere metrical exercises. He also mentions the attitude of the Greeks, to whom "youthful beauty was in itself a thing to be worshipped as almost divine" and that "the admiration it aroused cannot be dismissed as merely sensuous. It was a source of inspiration, not only to the plastic artist but also to great poets, and, as Plato explicitly tells us, to Socrates himself."

Although Reid disparages his ability as a translator many of his verses display a true Greek spirit, and it is a pity that the Greek originals were not printed along with his own versions in English. ( )