I have interpreted the word 'Imitations' rather widely. It is quite possible, for example, that Clough never read Vergil's Lines Written in a Lecture-Room (Catalepton V): yet the poem of Clough which I have brought into connexion with this piece is, I think, a truer translation of it than could be found elsewhere. I will venture to hope, again, that I may be readily forgiven for placing beside Statius' famous Invocation to Sleep six sonnets on a like subject from six English masters of the sonnet-form.

I have to thank the following authors and publishers for permission to reprint copyright pieces: Messrs. G. Bell & Sons (four versions by Calverley, Nos. 67, 82, 145, 149), Prof. D.A. Slater (versions of Lucretius, Nos. 66, 69, and Catullus, No. 97), Messrs. Blackwood (two pieces by the late Sir Theodore Martin, Nos. 92, 136), Prof. Ellis and Mr. John Murray (version of Catullus, No. 85), The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press and the Executors of the late Sir R.C. Jebb (version of Catullus, No. 74), Mr. L.J. Latham and Messrs. Smith Elder (version of Propertius, No. 179, from Mr. Latham's Odes of Horace and Other Verses), Messrs. George Allen (version of Horace from the Ionica of the late William Cory, No. 148), Mr. John Murray (version of Horace by Mr. Gladstone, No. 126), Dr. T.H. Warren and Mr. John Murray (version of Vergil, No. 110), Mr. James Rhoades and Messrs. Kegan Paul (version of Vergil, No. 119), Mr. W.H. Fyfe (version of Statius, No. 262).

[44]

By the side of this Epitaph may be placed Pope's Epitaph upon Mrs. Corbet, with Johnson's comment:

HERE rests a woman good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason and with sober sense.
No conquest she, but o'er herself, desired,
No arts essayed but not to be admired.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinced that Virtue only is our own.
So unaffected, so composed a mind,
So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refined,
Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;
The saint sustained it, but the woman died.

'The subject of it', says Johnson, 'is a character not discriminated by any shining or eminent peculiarities: yet that which really makes, though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs weary and disgusted from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character, which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value should be made known and the dignity established.'

[66]

(Beginning at the third paragraph, Illud in his rebus...)

BUT here's the rub. There soon may come a time
You'll count right reason treason and the prime
Of mind the spring of guilt; whereas more oft
In blind Religion are the seeds of crime.