First Edition, October, 1905. Reprinted (with corrections on pp. xviii and 96), May, 1906, February, 1908, January, 1911. @1-13-41 J.A gift W. H. Wait PREFACE. A SELECTION of the hundred best Latin Lyrics is a book the contents of which must vary largely, not only according to individual taste, but according to the limits within which the poems are chosen, and the range which the term lyrical poetry is taken to cover. It will be sufficient here to explain in a a few words the choice made in the following pages. The pieces have been taken wholly from ancient or classical Latin. The medieval lyrics, though written at a time when Latin was still a living language, are thus excluded, together with many others by authors of the earlier and later Renaissance whose work is as genuine and as beautiful as that of the classical decadence. But the classical period has been extended to admit a few examples of poems which really belong to the beginning of the |