“Admiring at the fact that for two and a half centuries hardly a scholar or man of letters had lived in England who had not once or oftener in his life been moved to try his hand at a translation from Horace, I was long ago inspired, in the days of enthusiastic youth, to compile an anthology of these fugitive efforts. It was not a bad book, nor an uninteresting, though I say it, and I am an unprejudiced judge, for it brought me in nothing — my publisher, with unnecessary prolixity, being careful to demonstrate to me the exact number of pounds, shillings, and pence he had lost by the venture.” (Charles Cooper, Horace in English, 1896)