TO THE REVEREND E. C. WICKHAM, M.A. MASTER OF WELLINGTON COLLEGE, AND LATE FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD. MY DEAR Mr WICKHAM, It is with great pleasure that I avail myself of your permission to address this little book to you. It is in itself satisfactory to connect my work in this way with my old school and to commend myself to the recollection of my friends at Wellington. But it is especially fortunate for me that in doing this I can also remember myself to you and present my respects to a well-known expositor of Horace. Essays like these, on points perhaps not before worked out in a subject extremely familiar, appear under one certain disadvantage. It is impossible to exhibit the ninety-nine cases of agreement with predecessors, which answer to each one of disagreement: and consequently what is actually said labours under a suspicious appearance of dissent. It is something therefore that, in submitting my suggestions to you, I can so easily disclaim the pretence to be the beginning of wisdom. Some might think-but you will not, nor will our best critics in England-that my views are condemned beforehand, when I postulate that the Odes of Horace, as we have them, are vi substantially the work of the author, all of them genuin all arranged and divided according to the poet's intention That there are errors, some not unimportant, no one woul deny, and upon some of these, where occasion offered, I hav slipped in a word. But with the correction of the text thes essays have little to do. Their real purpose I need not her anticipate. With much respect I subscribe myself, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, My dear Mr Wickham, Yours very sincerely, A. W. VERRALL. PREFACE. These Essays represent in a more formal shape so much as seemed worth publishing of a course of lectures delivered in Trinity College, Cambridge. The preparation for this course led me to give several months to the study of the Odes: when I had finished I was tempted to push further, and finally resolved upon the present book. In fitting it for the Press, as upon other occasions, I have received much help from my colleague and friend Mr F. J. H. JENKINSON. Perhaps I need scarcely add that I only am responsible for the substance. A. W. V. |