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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838,

By CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED AT THE

BOSTON TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

PREFACE.

THE object of the Publishers, in having the present work prepared, was to afford to the student a correct, yet cheap edition of Sallust.

The text, of which this is a reprint, was prepared by F.D. Gerlach, P. D., Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Bâsle -a ripe and able scholar, who has devoted many years to the study of Sallust, and the completion of a good edition. His text is considered by Dr. Beck, Professor of Latin in Harvard University, who very kindly supplied the Editor with a copy, as the best extant,—an opinion in which, there is very little doubt, most school-boys will most heartily concur, as, for many reasons, this text is easier to construe than any before published in this country.

So much for the text: a few words now for the notes. The objection is very commonly made to notes on the classics, that they give the most satisfactory explanation of words and sentences, which the student would have understood just as well without any notes at all; while they preserve a most oracular silence about those places which are really difficult to comprehend; and nothing can be more provoking to a school-master than such notes as these.

There is, undoubtedly, much foundation for such objections, in many editions of the classics. It is very easy for an editor to wink out of sight a difficult passage, while an easy one affords him a grand opportunity to display his learning;· much like the singers in our churches, whose voices are very faint when they have any complicated music to̟ sing; but when a plain cadence occurs, they shout out with all their strength.

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