All the extant poems of Ovid, with the exception of the Metamorphoses, are elegiac. It was the metre then most in vogue. All the minor poets, his contemporaries, wrote in it. One of his earliest works is the “Amores,” a collection of elegies, most of which are addressed to his favourite mistress Corinna. Some of them, however, were composed subsequently to his Epistles and Art of Love.[750] An epigram, which is prefixed, states that there were originally five books, but that the author subsequently reduced them to the present number, three. Licentiousness disfigures these annals of his amours; but they teem with the freshness and buoyancy of youth, and sparkle with grace and ingenuity. The twenty-one _Epistolæ Heroidum_, i. e. Epistles to and from Women of the Heroic Age, are a series of love-letters: their characteristic feature is passion; the ardour of which is sometimes interfered with by too laboured conceits and excessive refinement. They are, in fact, the most polished efforts of one whose natural indolence often disinclined him from expending that time and pains on the work of amending and correcting which distinguished Virgil. Their great merit consists in the remarkable neatness with which the sentiments are expressed, and the sweetness of the versification; their great defect is want of variety. The subject necessarily limited the topics. The range of them is confined to laments for the absence of the beloved object, the pangs of jealousy, apprehensions of inconstancy, expressions of warm affection, and descriptions of the joys and sorrows of love. With the exception of the Metamorphoses, the Epistles have been greater favourites than any of the works of Ovid. Some were translated by Drayton and Lord Hervey. The beautiful translation, by Pope, of the epistle from Sappho to Phaon, is familiar to all; and his touching picture of the struggle between passion and principle, in the letter of Eloisa to Abelard, owes a portion of its inspiration to the Epistles of Ovid.