Author's Preface: To the Reader I have ventured to submit to the enlightened Public of this island the following collection, consisting in a great measure of the productions of an earlier age, and of translations from the minor classics.
At the present moment, when so great an impulse has been given in this Colony to those whose pursuits of classic Literature in which the noble seminary of native talent recently established must prove an auxiliary so powerful, I have thought that even an imperfect translation might serve to attract the attention of the rising generation of Tasmania to some of the less trodden paths of the poetical literature of Rome and Greece; and that any exertions, however weak, directed at the present moment to such an object might not prove utterly inefficient in their results to the great cause of Colonial advancement.
The translation of three books of the Pharsalia of Lucan occupy a considerable portion of this volume ... I have not the vanity to attempt to supply the deficiency which still exists of a translation, in which the spirit of the Pharsalia may be conveyed to a British public. My ambition confines itself to attracting to that deficiency the attention of others better able to supply it. Nor do I present the present translation as one of the selected beauties of the Pharsalia, but as one of that portion of the poem best adapted by consecutive order to the limits of my undertaking. ... 'Emendaturus, si licuisset, erat.'
Sandy Bay, near Hobart Town, December 1846. (v-vi).
