HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY GIFT OF GEORGE ARTHUR PLIMPTON DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, to wit: District Clerk's Office. BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the thirteenth day of April, A. D. 1827, in the fifty-first year of the Independence of the United States of America, Hilliard, Gray, Little, & Wilkins, of the said district, have deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the words following, to wit: Excerpta ex Scriptis Publii (Ovidi? Nasonis. Accedunt Notulæ Anglicæ et Questiones. In usum Scholæ Bostoniensis. In conformity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, “An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned;" and also an act, entitled, "An act, supplementary to an act, entitled, An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints." JOHN W. DAVIS, Clerk of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE. From the University Press-By Hilliard, Metcalf, & Co. PREFACE. In preparing this little volume from the writings of Ovid, great care has been taken to admit nothing in the slightest degree indelicate, or improper for the study of youth. Sufficient attention does not appear to have been paid to this point in the selections from Ovid which have commonly been used in schools. One object has been to furnish examples of the different kinds of measure used by this polished and fascinating writer. It is not a little surprising, that in the whole course of studies preparatory for, and pursued at our colleges, not a verse of Pentameter measure occurs. * There are a few lines of the Elegiac measure in the Collectanea Græca Minora, which formerly served as a text, whereby to explain this measure; but since the exclusion of that excellent book from the requisitions for entrance, nothing of the kind remains, either of Greek or Latin, in the whole course. This is the more surprising, since, in addition to the frequency with which this kind of versification occurs, it may be considered one of the most easy and graceful which the ancient poets used. *There may be exceptions to this remark, although there is none within the writer's knowledge. |