PREFACES

BY HEYNE.

I believe no one will find me lacking in constancy or faith in a love once embraced, who has seen me dedicate my senile effort to Tibullus, to whom I had devoted my youthful efforts forty years ago, and my second revisions twenty years ago. original: "Laus in amore mori!" "Praise be to dying in love!" Yet, that I might not refuse to put the finishing touch to it, the grateful memory of many things I owe to Tibullus moved me. For I had first placed the beginnings of those studies in him, to which it was fated that I should one day be called to cultivate and teach. For although I had been addicted to other studies and had been led to a different kind of life and duties, nevertheless, the entire course of my life was later derived from that work which I had once performed on this poet out of necessity. At that time, by establishing the reading and interpretation of Tibullus, I had sharpened my sense and judgment of the true, the good, and the beautiful—a matter concerning which men in this field of literature were not yet working very hard at that time. I had noticed what truth and power existed in Greek and Latin literature to form minds, and I had begun to perceive how the interpretation of classical writers ought to be instituted to achieve that goal, and in what things that task should be contained. Then, indeed, that work put into Tibullus greatly profited me for inducing a softer sense and habit of mind, by which I might be more inclined to imbibe benevolence and humanity, so that I became accustomed to doing things pleasing to others and avoiding those things unpleasant to them. For even if the precepts of many virtues can be much more powerful and effective, it usually happens that, if we weigh not only the words but the thoughts