The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus, by
Caius Valerius Catullus

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Title: The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus

Author: Caius Valerius Catullus

Translator: Richard Burton
Leonard Smithers

Release Date: March 3, 2007 [EBook #20732]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The

Carmina

of

Caius Valerius Catullus

Now first completely Englished into Verse
and Prose, the Metrical Part by Capt.
Sir Richard F. Burton, R.C.M.G.,
F.R.G.S., etc., etc., etc., and the
Prose Portion, Introduction,
and Notes Explanatory
and Illustrative by
Leonard C.
Smithers

[Illustration]

_LONDON: MDCCCXCIIII: PRINTED FOR THE TRANSLATORS:
IN ONE VOLUME: FOR PRIVATE SUBSCRIBERS ONLY_

[Illustration]

* * * * *

DEAR MR. SMITHERS,

By every right I ought to choose you to edit and bring out Sir Richard
Burton's translation of Catullus, because you collaborated with him on this
work by a correspondence of many months before he died. If I have hesitated
so long as to its production, it was because his notes, which are mostly
like pencilled cobwebs, strewn all over his Latin edition, were headed,
"NEVER SHEW HALF-FINISHED WORK TO WOMEN OR FOOLS." The reason of this
remark was, that in all his writings, his first copy, his first thought,
was always the best and the most powerful. Like many a painter who will go
on improving and touching up his picture till he has destroyed the
likeness, and the startling realistic nature of his subject, so would Sir
Richard go on weakening his first copy by improvements, and then appeal to
me to say which was the best. I was almost invariably obliged, in
conscience, to induce him to stick to the first thought, which had grasped
the whole meaning like a flash. These notes were made in a most curious
way. He used to bring his Latin Catullus down to _table d'hote_ with him,
and he used to come and sit by me, but the moment he got a person on the
other side, w