PREFATORY NOTE. IN the following pages I have expressed some views which are, so far as I know, new, upon the chronology of Vergil's poems, and on the leading ideas of the Aeneid. For a detailed substantiation of these I must refer to two pamphlets published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, entitled respectively Ancient Lives of Vergil, with an Essay on the Poetry of Vergil in connection with his Life and Times, and Suggestions Introductory to a Study of the Aeneid. I hope at some future time to publish similar papers on the development of the story of Aeneas' wanderings, and on early criticisms of Vergil, in support of what I have said in Chapters IV. and VI. of the present essay. OXFORD, August, 1879. H. N. |