been frequently reminded that the writer was ready and willing to stand
sponsor for any new volume he, Field, might desire to bring out.

"The only thing I have on hand that might make a book," said Field, "are
some few paraphrases of the Odes of Horace which my brother, 'Rose,' and
I have been fooling over, and which, truth to tell, are certainly freely
rendered. There are not enough of them, but we'll do some more, and I'll
add a brief Life of Horace as a preface or introduction."

It is to be regretted that Field never carried out his intention with
respect to this last, for he had given much thought and study to the
great Roman satirist, and what Eugene Field could have said upon the
subject must have been of interest. It is my belief that as he thought
upon the matter it grew too great for him to handle within the space he
had at first determined, and that tucked away within the recesses of his
literary intentions was the determination, nullified by his early death,
to write, _con amore_, a life of Quintus Horatius Flaccus.

This determination to write separately an extended account of Horace
greatly reduced the bulk of the material intended for the Sabine Echoes,
and it was with respect to this that Field apologetically and, as was
his wont, humorously wrote:

"The volume may be rather thin _in corpore_, but think how hefty it will
be intellectually."

When it came to the discussion of how many copies should be printed it
was suggested that the edition be an exceedingly limited one, in order
to cause as much scrambling and heartburning as possible among our
bibliophilic brethren. And never shall I forget the seriousness of the