1 A few strictures may be confined to a note. The claim of the Preface that unpublished documents have been used for the biography of Vida is not borne out in the biographical chapter or its notes. L. G. Giraldi says (p. 1) that Vida looked like Virgil; his description does not ‘miss Vergil,’ at least it is transcribed from the respectable Suetonius-Donatus Life. Mistranslations occur on pp. 5,11,16,20,70,142,229,239,255,265. The numerous Latin quotations should have been repunctuated. The discussion of Virgil's theme of 'order’ (pp. 212-214) is too close to that of V. Pöschl (Eng. tr., pp. 19-20) to go without acknowledgment. Grammar is violated in the phrase ‘begins in medias res,’ p. 13 et passim.