I have explained the design and plan of a publication which was undertaken and completed during the hours of relaxation from a literary performance of a more severe nature. The tediousness of idleness is more oppressive to a mind of any activity, than labour and exertion. Gastar el tiempo porque el tiempo sobra, lo que falta despues, y no se cobra. Don Francisco de Borja. That works of this kind are liable to suffer from the imputation of being light and trivial I am well aware. I am not inclined to dispute the truth that languages are the mere instruments of real knowledge. Yet with these a more familiar acquaintance is necessarily obtained by habits of composition and of version. The labour and time bestowed in the application to the perfect idioms of Greece and Rome, have never been condemned except by the ignorant; since we are thus introduced "to the society of the free and polished nations of antiquity; and to a familiar converse with those immortal men, who spoke the sublime language of eloquence and reason.*" And in acquiring a competent knowledge of the four languages of modern Europe which flow from the Latin as their source, those to whom the latter is not a stranger are easily able to bestow some portion of time, without interrupting the prosecution of more important studies, and more serious pursuits. * Gibbon, Rom. Hist. 12, 138. Horace, Ode i. 4, by the Earl of Rochester,.. 42 The Phoenix of Claudian, by Motin,.... Ovid, Eleg. i. 9, by the Earl of Rochester, . Horace, Ode i. 3, by Du Perron, 49 52 56 Ovid, Epist. 10, Anonymous,. 60 Ovid, Eleg. iii. 4, by Sir C. Sedley,... 66 Ovid, Epist. 1, by Du Perron,..... 70 Ovid, Epist. 8, Anonymous, 74 Ovid, De Arte Amandi, i. 681, by Nicole,.... 78 Ode from Gallus, by Cotton,. 82 Martial, book viii. epigram 77, by B. Jonson, 86 Ovid, Trist. iii. 3, by Vaughan, . Lines from Claudian's Rape of Proserpine, by 89 Nicole, 92 |