AN ECLECTIC LIBRARY.

Ovid.

Latin Texts.

Ovidius Metamorphoseos cum commento familiari. Paris: printed by André Bocard, 1496. —Gorgeous and very legible blackletter edition.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in fifteen books: with the notes of John Minellius, and others, in English. With a prose version of the author. By Nathan Bailey, carefully revised, improved, and enlarged. With the additions of L’Abbe Banier’s arguments and explanations of the history and mythology of each fable. Dublin, 1774. —Nathan Bailey, the editor of the best and most popular English dictionary before Johnson’s, provides a running rearrangement of the text into prose, making it much easier for intermediate students of Latin to grasp the meaning. Banier’s explanations are mostly rationalistic, explaining (with often dodgy reasoning) how each myth may be founded on some historical fact. Some of the early pages are incomplete in this scan; see the later edition below.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books: with the notes of John Minellius, and others, in English. With a prose version of the author. By Nathanl. Bailey. A new edition, carefully revised. Dublin: P. Wogan, 1815.

The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso; elucidated by an analysis and explanation of the fables, together with English notes, historical, mythological, and critical, and illustrated by pictorial embellishments; with a Clavis, giving the meaning of all the words with critical exactness. By Nathan Covington Brooks, A. M. Philadelphia: Grigg, Elliot, & Co., 1849. —A copiously annotated edition of the first four books, designed for young Latin students who have done with Caesar and are moving on to Ovid.
Fifth edition, 1857. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co.; Cincinnati: H. W. Derby & Co.

Loeb editions.

Ovid: Heroides and Amores. With an English translation by Grant Showerman.
Another copy.

Ovid: Metamorphoses. With an English translation by Frank Justus Miller, Ph.D., LL.D.

Vol. I. Books I–VIII.
Another copy.

Vol. II.

Ovid’s Fasti. With an English translation by Sir James George Frazer.


Translations.

Arranged alphabetically by translator. But first, an accumulation of great names in the translation business:

Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. Translated by the most eminent hands. Adorn’d with sculptures. London: Printed for Jacob Tonson at Shakespear’s-Head over-against Katharine-Street in the Strand, 1717. —Translations by Dryden, Addison, Congreve, Gay, and many other poets, all adding up to a complete translation of the Metamorphoses. A beautiful book, with beautiful engravings.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in Fifteen Books. Translated by Mr. Dryden, Mr. Addison, Dr. Garth, Mr. Mainwaring, Mr. Congreve, Mr. Rowe, Mr. Pope, Mr. Gay, Mr. Eusden, Mr. Croxall, and other eminent hands. Published by Sir Samuel Garth, M.D. Adorn’d with Sculptures. —We were not quite able to find a matched set of the two-volume edition, but we do have both volumes from different printings in excellent scans.

Vol. I. Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for G. Risk, G Ewing and W. Smith, 1727.

Vol. II. London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson, 1736.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses: translated by various authors. Published by Sir Samuel Garth. London: Printed for the proprietors of the English Classics, by J. F. Dove, 1826.

Ovid. Translated by Dryden, Pope, Congreve, Addison, and others. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 1844.

Vol. I. Metamorphoses I–IX.

Vol. II. Metamorphoses X–XV; Epistles.

St: Barrett.

Ovid’s Epistles, translated into English verse; with critical essays and notes. Being part of a poetical and oratorical lecture, read in the grammar-school of Ashford, in the County of Kent; and calculated to initiate youth in the first rudiments of taste. By St: Barrett, A.M., Master of the said school. London: Printed for J. Richardson, 1759.

Thomas Churchyard.

The Three First Bookes of Ovid de Tristibus translated into English. Imprinted at London in Fleetstreete, neare unto Sainct Dunstones Church, by Thomas Marsh. 1580. —Photographic facsimile.

R—— F——.

Ajax His Speech to the Grecian Knabbs, from Ovid’s Metam. Lib. XIII. Attempted in broad Buchans. To which are added a Journal to Portsmouth, and a Shop-Bill, in the same dialect. With a key. By R—— F—— Gent. Glasgow, 1755. It must have taken a certain uncommonly brilliant species of genius to attempt the translation of Ovid into contemporary Scots dialect.

At threeps I am na’ sae perquire,
    Nor auld-farren as he,
Bat at banes-brakin, it’s well kent,
    He has na’ maughts like me.

William Windsor Fitzthomas.

Ten Epistles of Ovid, translated into English verse, by the late Rev. Wm. Windsor Fitzthomas, A. M. With the Latin and notes. To which are subjoined, the Epistles of Hero to Leander, and Leander to Hero, by a different hand; that of Sappho to Phaon by Pope; and of Dido to Eneas by Dryden. London: C. and R. Baldwin, 1807.

Arthur Golding.

Shakespeare’s Ovid. Being Arthur Golding’s translation of the Metamorphoses, edited by W. H. D. Rouse, Litt.D. London: At the De la More Press, 1904. —A beautifully printed edition of the translation first printed in 1567. The verse is in Elizabethan fourteeners, which still seems to be the best meter for classical epic poetry.

Henry King.

The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidius Naso. Translated in English blank verse by Henry King, M.A. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871.

Christopher Marlowe.

Epigrammes and Elegies. By I. D. and C. M. At Middleborough, [1590]. —Translations and original poems by John Davies; translations of Ovid by Christopher Marlowe.

The Art of Love. Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). Translated by Charles D. Young. Together with the Elegies translated by Christopher Marlowe. New York: Horace Liveright Inc., 1931 (reprinted 1932).

T. P.

Ovid’s Tristia. Containing five books of mournful elegies: which he sweetly compos’d while in the midst of his adversity, while he liv’d in Tomos, a city of Pontus, where he died, after seven years’ banishment from Rome. Newly translated into English by T.P. 1713.

Henry T. Riley.

The Fasti, Tristia, Pontic Epistles, Ibis, and Halieticon of Ovid. Literally translated into English prose, with copious notes, by Henry T. Riley, B.A. London: George Bell & Sons, 1881.
Another copy.

The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Literally translated into English prose, with copious notes and explanations, by Henry T. Riley, B.A. London: George Bell & Sons, 1889.
1871 edition, which is probably identical.

John Benson Rose.

The Fasti of Ovid. By John Menson Rose. London: Dorrell and Son, 1866. —In heroic couplets.

George Sandys.

Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished by G. S. Imprinted at London 1626. —Scanned at very high resolution.
1628 edition, printed by Robert Young are to be sold by J. Grismond. —From the cartoonishly bad copy of the 1626 frontispiece, we deduce that this must be a pirated edition.

Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz’d, and Repre­sented in Figures. An essay to the translation of Virgil’s Aeneis. By G. S. Oxford: John Lichfield, 1632. —With superb engravings, one for each book (the one for Book II is missing), that place all the characters from each book in the same scene.
Another copy.
1640 edition.

John Taylor.

Poems and Translations, including the first four books of Ovid’s Fasti; to which are added the ancient Roman calendar, with solar and siderial tables, calculated for the thirteenth year of the Christian era, and giving the positions of two hundred and five principal stars then visible at Rome. The whole illustrated by historical, astronomical, and mythological notes. By John Taylor. Liverpool: William Forshaw, 1839.

Charles D. Young.

The Art of Love. Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso). Translated by Chrles D. Young. Together with the Elegies translated by Christopher Marlowe. New York: Horace Liveright Inc., 1931 (reprinted 1932).

Anonymous.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated into English prose with the Latin text and order of construction on the same page, and critical, historical, geographical, and classical notes in English. For the use of schools, as well as private gentlemen. Fifth edition, corrected. London: [various booksellers], 1822. —The format matches that of Joseph Davidson’s Virgil, inclining us to believe that it is the work of the same translator.