John Evve ASSISTANT MASTER AT ETON, LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. LONDON: TO THE REV. C. O. GOODFORD, D. D. PROVOST OF ETON. MY DEAR PROVOST, I am much indebted to you for the encouragement you have freely and kindly given to this work of mine, and for the permission to dedicate it to yourself. In proposing this, my desire was to associate the work in some degree with the name and fame of ETON; to send it forth from our local Press, as an offshoot of the scholarship fostered in this ancient School and College. I might, having myself been a Member of the Sister Royal Foundation, and remembering that its present Provost was the first to originate the idea of compiling and issuing an ETON HORACE, have hesitated between his claims and yours upon any tribute of respect that I had to offer. But we Assistant Masters (like the Armenians in Tacitus) are ambigua gens ingeniis et situ. Actual members of an University College, we are locally and virtually attached to this place, round which cluster present usefulness and it is an object of honourable and grateful ambition to produce any work worthy of the Imprimatur of the College, and the approbation of its representative-yourself. I address myself in this edition to Scholars generally, and the literary world. Not that I have the pretensions to teach, which some may think implied in the name of Editor 'I only speak right on, 'I tell you that which you yourselves do know.' But having lived many years in an Horatian atmosphere, among Colleagues too of the keen and tasteful scholarship whom you, your predecessor, and your successor have rejoiced to gather under the shadow of these walls,—I needed but the humble qualities of method and observation to gather, and simplicity of language to convey, much that served for illustration of my subject. Eton abounds in springs intellectual, as our neighbouring high commons do in natural springs, plentiful and proper for irrigation, wanting but the channel to draw them off. I have tried, ὡς ὅτ ̓ ἀνὴρ ὀχετηγός, to open such a channel, to draw off the ready rills into the vale of literature. If they flow clear and perennial, thanks will be due to many friends. It is by degrees that the book has assumed its present size and substance. I thought at first only of supplying a good School Manual, taking salient points, correcting |