contemporaries might be cited, which seem almost irradiated by the light of Inspiration. That your Royal Highness may long live in the hearts of a generous Nation, which hails with joy and thankfulness your dawning virtues, is, Sir, the sincere prayer of Your Royal Highness's Faithful and Loyal Servant, RAVENSWORTH. PREFACE. THE translation of Horace's Odes into any modern language is a task of acknowledged difficulty and of very doubtful success. By many the attempt has been considered hopeless. The famous phrase of Petronius Arbiter, "Horatii curiosa felicitas," is in every critic's mouth; and the more we study that elaborate and unrivalled felicity, the less capable we feel of reproducing it in another language. Nor is this the only or the least difficulty which presents itself to the translator of Horace's Odes. Abrupt transitions, concentrated sententiousness, obscure and remote allusions, are scattered broadcast through the pages. By a diligent and anxious translator the abruptness must often be softened, the sententiousness often diluted, the obscurities made intelligible; here and there indelicacies must be veiled. These difficulties have probably been sufficient to deter from the attempt many more competent to execute it than the Author of the present work, yet these difficulties are not all insuperable. The peculiar felicity of expression is indeed inimitable and untranslateable, and a multitude of passages will necessarily lose much of their terseness and vigour by translation. Who can translate into verse the following stanzas without some degree of expansion and circumlocution: "Sperat infestis, metuit secundis, Summovet: non si male nunc, et olim In this, and in many similar passages, allowance must be made for the peculiarities of language and the necessary use of the article and auxiliary verbs, which offer so great an impediment to the Translator in modern tongues. It is difficult to dance in fetters, and when the limbs are too closely cramped the fetters must be in some degree relaxed. Something, however, may be done when clothing Horace in an English garb, and something I hope to have accomplished. True poetry may be transfused from one language into another; the correct meaning may be re-embodied; the moral colouring may be transferred; the sly joke may be relished in English as well as in Latin; the wine-cup may again flow in Claret if not in Falernian; and the heart again grow warm with the accents of friendship or of love. Some of our greatest poets have not disdained this task of translation; and if Dryden has succeeded in his magnificent paraphrase of the "Tyrrhena regum progenies," Milton, the greatest of modern poets (with all respect be it spoken), has failed in his "Ode to |