Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/9

 EDITORIAL NOTE. PUBLISHED in 1733, and the performance of an eminent philologist, this Translation of the famous Familiar Colloquies still remains the only one which embraces the whole work, although small portions have been rendered into English by various writers both of the present and preceding centuries. The present Edition is printed almost exactly as it came from the Translator, and thus necessarily the phraseology bears in various respects features of another period than the present, but this drawback may be compensated for to some extent in the closeness of the rendering. Regarding the book itself, it is unnecessary here to make any comment. Its very great popularity everywhere that the Latin language has been spoken or read, is sufficient evidence of the great interest attaching to the work. Either as descriptive of manners and opinions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or as a guide to the student of Colloquial Latin, there are few works that may be compared with it.