818

1846

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York

ΤΟ

MY OLD AND VALUED FRIEND,

JAMES CAMPBELL, ESQ.,

WHO, AMID THE GRAVER DUTIES OF A JUDICIAL STATION,

CAN STILL FIND LEISURE TO GRATIFY A PURE AND

CULTIVATED TASTE, BY REVIVING THE

STUDIES OF EARLIER YEARS.

Margaret E. Huggard

2-16-38

PREFACE.

THE very favourable reception which the present work has enjoyed, both in Europe and our own country, has induced the editor to put it forth again in a neater and still more convenient form. The design, therefore, originally entertained, of republishing the larger Horace, is now abandoned, and the present volume is to supply its place for the time to come. The object of this abridgment is, as was stated on its first appearance, to supply the student with a text-book of convenient size, and one that may contain, at the same time, a commentary sufficiently ample for all his wants. The cditor hopes, from the rapid sale of the previous editions, that this desirable result has been successfully accomplished; and he returns his thanks to those instructers, who have not allowed themselves to be trammelled by sectional feelings and prejudices, but have adopted his work in their respective institutions, although it does not emanate from what pleased to consider as the hearth of American

some are

scholarship.

may seem strange to talk of sectional prejudices in matters of education and classical learning; yet the fact cannot be disguised, that they not only exist, but exercise also a very baneful influence among us; and we may well despair of seeing the scholarship of our common country attain to any degree of eminence, while these miserable prejudices are allowed to continue. The editor speaks thus plainly on this subject, as he himself has experienced, more, perhaps, than any other individual, the effects which such feelings are but too well calculated to produce. He has been charged with overloading the authors, whom he has from time to time edited, with cumbersome commentaries; he has been accused of making the path of classical learning too easy for the stu

dent, and of imparting light where the individual should have been allowed to kindle his own torch and to find his own way. What made these charges the more amusing was, that while they were gravely uttered on this side of the Atlantic, the editor's labours were deemed worthy of being republished in three different quarters on the other side of the ocean. No complaint was made in Europe of heavy commentaries, of too much aid having been imparted to the young student, or of too much light having been thrown upon the meaning of the ancient authors; on the contrary, the editor's labours were praised for possessing the very qualities that were deemed objectionable by some of his own countrymen. It was thought that the classical student required a great deal of assistance in his earlier progress, a great deal of light in the first steps of his career; and to crown all, the first London edition of the Horace was exhausted in less than three months, while an edition of Terence, now republishing in Boston, was got up by Dr. Hickie, “as nearly as possible," to use the language of his own preface, " on the plan of Anthon's Horace."

66

Now, one of two things: either the youth of Britain, the classical students in the land of Bentley and Porson, are very badly taught, and, therefore, want all the aid which copious commentaries can afford, while our own youth in this respect are so highly favoured as to need little, if any, assistance at all; or else they, who are intrusted abroad with the education of the young, are so liberal minded, and so far removed from all paltry prejudices, as even to receive a work from a foreign land, no matter where that land be situated, provided the work in question be found of any utility in the education of the young. The editor will not undertake to decide this very interesting point, but leaves it for the grave consideration of his countrymen, merely remarking, that the Sallust, Cicero, and Cæsar, which are edited on precisely the same plan with the Horace, have all been republished in England, and that too without any effort on his own part to bring about such a result.

Columbia College, March 15, 1839.