TO THE

REV. F. W. FARRAR, B.D.

MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE,

In admiration of an intellect enriched by the variety of culture which gives renown to the Scholar, ennobled by the unity of purpose which blends the vocation of the Scholar with the mission of the Divine,

IS INSCRIBED

This attempt to facilitate among English readers the study of an Author so humane, whether in his weakness or his strength, that his sympathies with mankind have obtained for him the indulgence which man accords to a friend. That indulgence is necessarily the greatest among those most indulgent as to man's weakness, if most exacting as to man's strength, 'THE SEEKERS AFTER GOD.'

TORQUAY: April 3, 1872.

PREFACE

TO THE EDITION OF 1872.

THE FIRST IMPRESSION of this work having become somewhat rapidly exhausted, this new Edition would have appeared long since, but for my desire to consider whether any fresh pains on my part could make the book more worthy of the favour with which it has been received by the general reader, and the courtesy with which it has been noticed by the critical press, wherever the review of it has been written by a scholar.

Of course no pains of mine can meet the objection of those who dissent to the whole framework of the translation, viz., the adoption of rhymeless metres—just as no reasonings, and certainly no examples, in favour of rhymed verse can alter my opinion, formed after long and careful deliberation, that while for the purposes of imitation or paraphrase rhyme may be advantageously employed in selected specimens of the Odes,

it is utterly antagonistic to a faithful translation of them, taken as a whole, whether in substance or in spirit.

Leaving, however, the question of rhythm one of those disputes of taste which admit of no arbiter but time, I may perhaps be pardoned for saying that I find many readers, failing, in the first instance, to accommodate the ear to the metres I have invented, who have contrived, on reperusal, to do so, and come round, more or less, to my side of the question.

Necessarily, therefore, whatever care I could take in revision is confined to details, and my main object has been to attend to every suggestion by competent authorities that might guide me towards closer approximation to the intention and sense of the original. In one or two instances of rhythm apart from interpretation, where it has seemed to me that this could be best effected by varying the type or form of the metre first selected, the Ode has been rewritten.

To be judged fairly, this book must, however, be taken as a whole of which the translation, though a principal, is still but a single part of a general designviz., not only by an English version but by introductory commentaries or explanatory notes, accompanied by a Latin text, carefully collated from the recent editions most popularly accepted by European scholars,—to