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EDITOR'S PREFACE.

THE REPUTATION of Professor CONINGTON as a scholar will rest upon his editions of the Choephoroe and of the works of Virgil and of Persius. As a translator he will continue to be known by his verse renderings of Horace, of the Æneid, and of the Agamemnon. In the Miscellanies now offered to the public he appears both as a scholar and a translator; but their distinctive mark is what, for want of a better phrase, may be styled literary versatility. Professor Conington approached scholarship from the point of view of literature, rather than of philology. As a scholar he was drawn to literature; as a man of letters he inclined to scholarship. Throughout the Miscellanies we trace this blending of his two main interests.

By the arrangement I have adopted in this book, the articles on English literature are followed by what will appear the most important section of the work, the Lectures on the History of Latin Poetry. To these succeed a few papers of pure scholarship. The first volume is completed by two essays on Liturgical questions, which during the last years of his life greatly occupied Mr. Conington's mind.

In making this collection I have availed myself of nearly everything in print or MS., with the exception of

a few early contributions to the Edinburgh Review. These, I believe, Mr. Conington would not himself have wished to reprint.

The second volume consists almost entirely of a prose translation of Virgil. I have reason to know that Professor Conington contemplated the publication of this translation as a supplement to his edition. Yet he has not left it in a state of entire completion; and it is clear from the rapidity with which the MS. is written, as well as from the minute alterations which have been made in the more studied passages, that this portion of his work suffers severely from posthumous publication.

In conclusion, I have only to add that in collecting and editing these Miscellanies, I have to the best of my ability performed what I regarded as a sacred duty to the memory of a friend from whom I received more than I find it possible to express.

Thanks must be rendered to the proprietors of the Quarterly, Edinburgh, North British, Contemporary, and other reviews, for their kind permission to reprint articles published by them.