Preface.

patterns of all that is truly beautiful itself. Is it not to be lamented that so many youths head off to universities who can barely put two sentences of pure Latin together, and at most can translate a few verses from the Gospel of John literally, but despite this already make a claim to the name of a scholar because they have perhaps composed a little anacreontic lyric poetry in the style of Anacreon song and borrowed the flowers for it! One would therefore gain a great deal if one could find means not only to awaken the urge in youths to read the ancients but also to make it more enduring; and these would be no other means than those that would facilitate the reading of these writers for them during their private study. Extensive commentaries and notæ variorum notes of various scholars are not these means. The mind of the youth who has a head on his shoulders is mostly too fiery to dwell upon these. A good, faithful translation, on the other hand—even granting that it did not have all the perfections of the original—would be very convenient for this purpose, and I could, in any case, confirm the usefulness of this means from my own experience. One objects, it is true: young people are thereby hindered from guessing the meaning of the author themselves, because they commonly remain slavishly with the translation, whereby their knowledge of the language is little or not at all expanded.