drunk your fill, it is time for you to quit the scene." And so the
curtain falls.

* * * * *

To our great loss there is no contemporary portrait of Horace. He
tells us himself (Ep. II, ii, 214; I, xx, 29) that he was short of
stature, his hair black but early tinged with grey; that he loved to
bask in sunshine, that his temper was irascible but easily appeased.
In advanced life he became fat; Augustus jests with him rather coarsely
on his protuberant figure. The portrait prefixed to this volume is
from a Contorniate, or bronze medallion of the time of Constantine,
representing the poet's likeness as traditionally preserved amongst
his countrymen three hundred years after his death.

The oldest extant manuscript of his works is probably that in the public
library of Berne, and dates from the ninth century. The earliest printed
edition, bearing neither date nor printer's name, is supposed to have
been published at Milan in 1470. Editions were also printed at Florence
and at Venice in 1482, and a third at Venice in 1492. An illustrated
edition on vellum was brought out by Aldus in 1501, and reissued in
1509, 1514, 1519. The Florence Press of the Giunti produced splendid
specimens in 1503, 1514, 1519. Between this date and the end of the
century seven more came forth from famous presses. Of modern editions
we may notice the vellum Bodoni folio of 1791, and the matchless Didot
of 1799 with its exquisite copperplate vignettes. Fortunate is the
collector who possesses the genuine first edition of Pine's "Horace,"
1733. It is known by an error in the text, corrected in the subsequent
and less bibliographically valuable impression of the same year.
A beautifully pictorial book is Dean Milman's; the student will prefer
Orelli, Macleane, Yonge, Munro and King, or Dean Wickham's scholarly
volumes.

* * * * *

In composing this modest little book I have had in view principally
readers altogether ignorant of Latin, but wishing to know something of
a writer lauded enthusiastically by all classical scholars: they will
observe that I have not introduced into its pages a single Latin word.
I have nourished also the hope that it might be serviceable to those
who have forgotten, but would like to recover, the Horace which they
learned at school; and to them I would venture to recommend the little
copy of the Latin text with Conington's version attached, in "Bell's
Pocket