This volume has been written in continuation of one which appeared some years ago on the Roman Poets of the Republic. I hope in a short time to bring out a new edition of that work, enlarged and corrected, and afterwards to add another volume which will treat of Horace and the Elegiac Poets. I have reserved for this later volume the examination of the minor poems which have been attributed to Virgil, most of which belong to the Augustan Age.

Besides the special acknowledgments of ideas or information derived from various sources, which are made in notes at the foot of the page where an occasion for them arises, I have to make a general acknowledgment of the assistance I have received in my studies of the Augustan literature from the earlier volumes of Dr. Merivale's ‘History of the Romans under the Empire,’ from the ‘History of Roman Literature’ by W. S. Teuffel, from M. Sainte-Beuve's ‘Étude sur Virgile,’ and from the Introductions and Notes to Professor Conington's edition of Virgil, and Mr. Munro's edition of Lucretius. In the account given of the Alexandrian literature in Chapter I, I have availed myself of the chapters treating of that subject in Helbig's ‘Campanische Wandmalerei;’ intreating of the estimation in which Virgil was held under the Roman Empire, I have taken several references from the work by Sr. Comparetti, ‘Virgilio nel Medio Evo;’ and in examining the order in which the Eclogues were composed, I have adopted the opinions expressed in Ribbeck's Prolegomena.