Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/28

Rh wish to dwell on in reading the original, and no more.

I have made acquaintance with such of the previous translations as I did not already know, though it seemed best to avoid consulting them in any passage till I had translated it myself. The few places in which I have been consciously indebted to others have been mentioned in the notes. Besides these, there are many other coincidences in expression and rhyme which might be detected by any one sharing my taste for that kind of reading, probably one or two in each poem: but as I believe them to be mere coincidences, I have not been at pains either to avoid them or to call attention to them. The only one of my predecessors in translating all the poems contained in this volume whom I need mention particularly is Mr. Howes. His book 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