It is just ten years since the lamented Author of this Commentary gave to the world of scholars an Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric, containing, amongst other valuable matter, a general outline of the contents of the treatise and paraphrases of the more difficult portions. In the preface to that book, which is an almost indispensable companion to the present edition and renders any special prolegomena to these volumes unnecessary, the Author describes the Introduction as preparatory to the detailed explanation of the work itself in an edition of the Greek text which had been long in preparation and was to appear as soon as it could be got ready. This promise is now at last fulfilled, under circumstances however in which the pathetic interest naturally attending the publication of any posthumous work like the present, is in this particular instance, if I may judge of the feelings of others by my own, intensified into a sense of more than usually deep regret that the labours of a large portion of an eminent scholar's life-time must now see the light without the advantage of his own editorial care.

Mr Cope died in the year 1873, but during the last four years of his life his work on the Rhetoric, though it had nearly approached completion, unhappily but unavoidably remained untouched.