acknowledged to have made a particular poet his own peculiar province. Then the historians of Rome - Mommsen, Merivale, Gibbon - often help the lecturer, as well as histories of literature, like the excellent work of Mr. Crutwell, and the late Professor Sellar's acute and eloquent studies in Roman poetry. The German writers, especially Bernhardy and Teuffel revised by Schwabe, are, of course, very valuable. But I have found the French school most helpful and stimulating. M. Patin's volumes entitled "Études sur la Poésie Latine" have been invaluable to me, especially in the earlier lectures, and, though I have often expressed my obligations to him, I owe to him many debts not specifically acknowledged, in the way of suggestion and point of view. An equal or greater debt I would own to another charming French critic, M. Constant Martha, whose eloquent study, "Le Poëme de Lucrèce," is as fascinating in style and as profound in insight as his "Moralistes sous l'Empire Romain," which works have both been largely used by me in the third and seventh lectures. Nisard's "Les Poëtes Latins de la Décadence" was the basis of the last lecture. Often, too, the masterly essays of M. Gaston Boissier have been helpful and inspiring. Indeed, for breadth of view as well as charm of style, the French writers on Latin literature seem to me quite unrivaled. In the case of other writers who have not been so largely used, acknowledgment is made to each in his own place. Among them I would mention especially the late Professor Nettleship's essays, and the tract of Hartman, "De Horatio Poeta." Though my obligations to previous writers are so large, my own opinions will be found to be a very pronounced ingredient in the book: I fear they will seem too pronounced to some, especially to the uncompromising and indiscriminate fautores veterum. Many of the lectures appeared in English and American magazines either before or after they were delivered as lectures; and I have to thank the proprietors and editors of the several magazines, especially those of the "Quarterly Review" (London), and the "Atlantic Monthly" (Boston), for permission to use them in this volume. In hardly any case, however, does the lecture appear in exactly the same form which it had as an article. Nor are the lectures printed precisely as they were delivered. To some (especially V., VI., VIII.), considerable additions have been made. The Appendix on Recent Translators of Virgil formed no part of the lecture as delivered in Baltimore and Chicago; neither did the remarks on Petronius in the eighth lecture. I have not printed in the lectures certain expressions called forth from me from time to time at their delivery by the uniform courtesy and friendliness of my hearers in America, at Baltimore, Richmond, Chicago, and New York, a courtesy and friendliness which upheld me at a time when my state of health made me apprehensive lest I should be quite unfit to show myself at all worthy of the high distinction which the invitation of the several learned bodies conferred on me. I therefore ask leave to express here my deep and abiding sense of the true kindness and generosity of which I was the object in America. Dull indeed would be the lecturer who should not feel, in such audiences as I had the good fortune to meet, a source of sustaining inspiration and of a comforting conviction that, whatever failings there might be on his part, one thing at all events would not fail, the encouraging kindliness and genuine sympathy of hearers as sincerely warm-hearted as keenly intelligent. |