PREFACE.

SOME years ago the translator of this volume published a version of Catullus, the reception of which, both by critics and the public, far exceeded his expectations. He now ventures to offer the present translation as the second of a series of poets, whose reproduction, thus far, has been to him, amid severer duties, a labour of love. Whereas Lucretius, Catullus, Horace, and Virgil, have of late years received from scholars no inconsiderable amount of attention, and have been presented in almost every European tongue, Tibullus, and others well deserving of notice, have been allowed to gather dust on the shelf. The following attempt, therefore, to interpret afresh and otherwise re-trim a sweet old author, will, he hopes, not prove unacceptable at the present time.

In the Interpretation and Notes reference has been made throughout to the editions of Scaliger, Broukhusius, Heyne, Voss, Lachmann, Dissen, and Ramsay; but, at the same time, the more recent results of German scholarship have been carefully weighed, and the emendations of such editors as Haupt, Rossbach, and Mueller, unhesitatingly accepted, when they have approved themselves to the translator's judgment.

For obvious reasons, two or three of the elegies have been