work in the original publication of Echoes from the Sabine Farm as a
labor of love--an effort from which some reputation might come, but
certainly no monetary remuneration. It was because he so regarded it
that he permitted the work to be first issued under the bolstering
influence of a patron. It was, so he thought, an excellent opportunity
to show his friends and acquaintances that his Pegasus was capable of
soaring to classic heights, and he little dreamed that the paraphrasing
of the Odes of Horace over which "Rose and I have been fooling" would be
required for a _popular_ edition. With the announcement of the Scribner
edition of The Sabine Echoes came also the intelligence of Field's
death.

I have found people who were somewhat puzzled as to the exact intentions
of the Fields with respect to these translations and paraphrases.
However, there can be no chance for mistake even to the veriest
embryonic reader of Horace, if he will but remember that, while some of
these transcriptions are indeed very faithful reproductions or
adaptations of the original, others again are to be accepted as the very
riot of burlesque verse-making.

The last stanza in the epilogue of this book reads:

Or if we part to meet no more
This side the misty Stygian river,
Be sure of this: On yonder shore
Sweet cheer awaiteth such as we--
A Sabine pagan's heaven, O friend--
And fellowship that knows no end.

FRANCIS WILSON.