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present to the English reader, in compact and accessible form, facilities for a comprehensive study of Horace's Odes, illustrated by the learning of critics collected from many competing editions, or by that of eminent scholars who have vouchsafed me their aid,— with such occasional observations of my own as some familiarity with the subjects treated induced me, not presumptuously, to suggest.

My task after all is one of those very humble ones, which are frequent enough among labours of love, and my ambition is not disproportioned to the humility of the task. Whatever the differences of taste and opinion as to the value of my translation, I venture to hope that neither that nor the book of which it is a portion can fail to obtain a place lowly indeed, but not unenduring, among those elucidations of one of the most popular, and in some respects one of the most difficult, poets of antiquity, to which every conscientious student of Horace will find it worth his while to refer.

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