Exercises in Latin Verse. By the Rev. G. Preston, M.A.
(Mac- millan.)—If the art of Latin verse-writing is to be kept alive, it will be by such books as this. Mr. Preston has taken great pains to collect some really fresh and good pieces for translation. They are not easy ; but it has been well said by one of the most experienced and skilful teachers of the day, that a difficult piece of good literary quality will often produce better work than a much easier piece, if it is poor and uninteresting. If one wants easy pieces, they may be readily found among the poetasters of the last century, as in Hammond, once called the English Tibullus. But no one would care to read them now, whereas it would be no small gain for a boy to be made to study the poems here collected, whatever the value of the versions of them that he might be able to achieve. The book is divided into three parts,—for elegiac, heroic, and lyric (including hendecasyllabic) verse respectively.
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