correction and without his consent, we may suspect that it was neither
without his knowledge nor against his will; when he speaks of the _manus
ultima_ as wanting, it is probably a mere piece of harmless affectation
to make himself seem liker the author of the _Aeneid_. The case was
different with the _Fasti_, the other long poem which he worked at side
by side with the _Metamorphoses_. The twelve books of this work, dealing
with the calendar of the twelve months, were also all but complete when
he was banished, and the first six, if not actually published, had, at
all events, got into private circulation. At Tomi he began a revision of
the poem which, apparently, he never completed. The first half of the
poem, prefaced by a fresh dedication to Germanicus, was published, or
republished, after the death of Augustus, to whom, in its earlier form,
it had been inscribed; the second half never reached the public. It
cannot be said that Latin poetry would be much poorer had the first six
books been suppressed also. The student of metrical forms would, indeed,
have lost what is metrically the most dexterous of all Latin poems, and
the archaeologist some curious information as to Roman customs; but, for
other readers, little would be missed but a few of the exquisitely told
stories, like that of Tarquin and Lucretia, or of the Rape of Proserpine,
which vary the somewhat tedious chronicle of astronomical changes and
national festivals.

The poems of the years of Ovid's exile, the _Tristia_ and the _Letters
from Pontus_, are a melancholy record of flagging vitality and failing
powers. His adulation of the Emperor and the imperial family passes all
bounds; it exhausts what would otherwise seem the inexhaustible
copiousness of his vocabulary. The long supplication to Augustus, which
stands by itself as book ii. of the _Tristia_, is the most elaborate and
skilful of these pieces; but those which may be read with the most
pleasure are the letters to his wife, for whom he had a deep affection,