Q. HORATII FLACCI EPISTOLAE AD PISONES, ET AUGUSTUM: WITH AN ENGLISH COMMENTARY AND NOTES: TO WHICH ARE ADDED CRITICAL DISSERTATIONS. CONTENTS. VOL. I. INTRODUCTION, _On Epistolary Writing_. EPISTOLA AD PISONES: _With an English Commentary and Notes_. EPISTOLA AD AUGUSTUM: _With an English Commentary and Notes_. VOL. II. DISSERTATION I. _On the Idea of Universal Poetry._ DISSERTATION II. _On the Provinces of Dramatic Poetry._ DISSERTATION III. _On Poetical Imitation._ DISSERTATION IV. _On the Marks of Imitation._ CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. INTRODUCTION, _On Epistolary Writing_. 13 EPISTOLA AD PISONES: _With an English Commentary and Notes_. 27 EPISTOLA AD AUGUSTUM: _With an English Commentary and Notes_. 279 TO SIR EDWARD LITTLETON, BART. DEAR SIR, Having reviewed these Sheets with some care, I beg leave to put them into your hands, as a testimony of the respect I bear you; and, for the time that such things may have the fortune to live, as a monument of our friendship. You see, by the turn of this address, you have nothing to fear from that offensive adulation, which has so much dishonoured Letters. You and I have lived together on other terms. And I should be ashamed to offer you even such a trifle as this, in a manner that would give you a right to think meanly of its author. Your extreme delicacy allows me to say nothing of my obligations, which otherwise would demand my warmest acknowledgements. For your constant favour has followed me in all ways, in which you could contrive to express it. And indeed I have never known any man more sensible to the good offices of his friends, and even to their good intentions, or more disposed, by every proper method, to acknowledge them. But you much over-rate the little services, which it has been in my power to render to you. I had the honour to be intrusted with a part of your education, and it was my duty to contribute all I could to the success of it. But the task was easy and pleasant. I had only to cultivate that good sense, and those generous virtues, which you brought with you to the University, and which had already grown up to some maturity under the care of a man, to whom we had both of us been extremely obliged; and who possessed every talent of a perfect institutor of youth in a degree, which, I believe, has been rarely found in any of that profession, since the days of _Quinctilian_. I wish this small tribute of respect, in which I know how cordially you join with me, could be any honour to the memory of an excellent person[4], who loved us both, and was less known, in his life-time, from that obscure situation to which the caprice of fortune oft condemns the most accomplished characters, than his highest merit deserved.