No translation of Horace has ever been perfectly satisfactory. The quality of the poet seems to elude translation. Some of the most successful versions are Conington, _Odes and Epodes_ (London, 1865); Lord Lytton, _Odes and Epodes_ (London, 1869), and Sargent, _Odes_ (Boston, 1893); supplementary matter may be found in Sellar's _Horace and the Elegiac Poets_ (Oxford, 1892). Short sketches and critical estimates of all the great Greek and Latin writers may be found in _The New International Encyclopedia_ (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1904.). These are written mainly by Harry Thurston Peck, for many years Professor of Latin in Columbia University and conceded to be one of the best Latin scholars in this country. They give all the facts that the general reader cares to know with an excellent bibliography of each writer. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS The exact title is _The Book of the Thousand and One Nights_. It contains two hundred and sixty-two tales, although the original edition omits one of the most famous, the story of _Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp_. Antoine Galland was the first translator into a European language. His French version was issued in 1717, in twelve volumes. Sir Richard Burton, who translated an unexpurgated edition of _The Arabian Nights_, with many notes and an essay on the sources of the tales, ascribed the fairy tales to Persian sources. Burton's edition gives all the obscene allusions but he treated the erotic element in the tales from the scholarly standpoint, holding that this feature showed the Oriental view of such matters, which was and is radically different from the Occidental attitude. Burton's work was issued by subscription in 1885-1886 in ten volumes and is a monument to his Oriental scholarship. Burton left at his death the manuscript of another celebrated Oriental work, _The Scented Garden_, but Lady Burton, who was made his executrix, although offered L25,000 for the copyright, destroyed the manuscript. She declared that she did this to protect her husband's name, as the world would look upon his notes as betraying undue fondness for the erotic, whereas she knew and his close friends knew that this interest was purely scholarly. Scholars all over the world mourned over this destruction of Burton's work. Another noteworthy unexpurgated translation was by John Payne, prepared for the Villon Society, and issued in 1882-1884. The best English translation is by E. W. Lane, an English Orientalist, whose notes are valuable. The editions of _The Arabian Nights_ are endless, and many famous artists have given the world their conception of the principal characters in these Arabian wonder stories. THE NIBELUNGENLIED