The point of departure for this book is the fact that Pope printed alongside his Imitations of Horace the texts of the original Horatian poems on which they were based. By doing this he asked his readers not merely to remember those famous Horatian poems, but actively to re-read them while they were reading his Imitations. In the case of each Imitation, two poems were being offered rather than one. Indeed, the texts of the Horatian poems were carefully prepared to encourage this double reading in the closest detail: individual Latin words, phrases, or whole lines were picked out from the italic text in roman type; parts of lines, whole lines, or even whole sections of some poems, were cut; emendations to some of the uncertainties in Horace's text had been chosen. Moreover, an elaborate system of index numbers or letters linked, from beginning to end, particular points in Pope's text to the parallel sections of Horace's poem. The result was that these well-known Latin poems commanded attention in a new way, and at every point begged comparison with the Imitations.

The importance of Pope's parallel texts has long been recognized, but there is no study which analyses this practice in detail and assesses its importance in all the Imitations. In offering such a study I emphasize the extraordinary complexity of the relationship between each Imitation and the poem on which it is based. Sustained comparison reveals that in each Imitation Pope has here slightly modified and there utterly transformed, here intensely echoed and there ironically undercut the countless minute particulars of Horace's rich poetic language and subtle poetic forms.