The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
BY
THE REV. LEWIS EVANS, M.A.,
LATE FELLOW OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD.
TO WHICH IS ADDED THE
METRICAL VERSION OF JUVENAL AND PERSIUS,
BY THE LATE
WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1881.
HARPER'S
NEW CLASSICAL LIBRARY.
COMPRISING LITERAL TRANSLATIONS OF
12mo, Cloth, $1 50 per Volume.
☞ Harper & Brothers will send either of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to anypart of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price.
While the poetical versions of Juvenal deservedly hold a veryhigh place in the literature of this country, it is a curious fact thatthere exists no single prose translation which can stand the test of evenordinary criticism. Whether it be that the temptation to a metricalversion of a poetical writer is too great with some, or whether thelabor of faithfully representing the genius of confessedly the mostdifficult writer in the Latin language has deterred others, the factis undeniable, that there is no prose version from which the unclassicalreader can form any adequate idea of the writings of thegreatest of Satirists.
Madan, though faithful, is utterly unintelligible to any one whohas not the Latin before him. Sheridan is far too free, in everysense of the word, to be either a fair expositor of his original, or tosuit the taste of the present day; and without any disparagement ofthe labors of Sterling, Nuttall, Smart, or Wallace, it was found impossibleto adopt any one of them even as the basis of a versionwhich should be worthy of a place in the present series.
The accompanying translation, therefore, is entirely original; andthe translator is not aware of having copied a single line from anyprevious version. How far he has succeeded in giving a faithfultranscript of the author, and in, at the same time, infusing some sparkof the fire and spirit of the original, must be for others to determine;all that he dares venture to asser