was published posthumously in 1845; but though it is stated in the
preface to want the author's last corrections, a good deal of it
must have been written long before, as the translation of the
Satires is announced as nearly half finished in the introduction to
a translation of Persius by the same author published in 1809, and
some specimens given in the notes to that volume correspond almost
exactly with the passages as they finally appear. The translation of
Persius is a work of decided ability, but, in common I am inclined
to think with all the other translations, fails to give an adequate
notion of the characteristics of that very peculiar writer. The
translation of the Horatian poems, on the other hand, seems to me on
the whole undoubtedly successful, though, for whatever reason, its
merits do not appear to have been recognized by the public. It is
unequal, and it is too prolix: but when it is good, which is not
seldom, it is very good, unforced, idiomatic, and felicitous. In one
of its features, the habit of supplying connecting links to Horace's
not unfrequently disconnected thoughts, perhaps I should have done
wisely to follow it more than I have done: but the matter is one
where a line must be drawn, and I am not without apprehension as it
is that the scholar will sometimes blame me for introducing what the
general reader at any rate may thank me for. I should be glad if any
notice which I may be fortunate enough to attract should go beyond
my own work, and extend to a predecessor who, if he had published a
few years earlier, when translations were of more account, could
scarcely have failed to rank high among the cultivators of this
branch of literature.