PREFACE

France in July, 1915, and saw much hard service there. He was more than once practically ordered home to hospital, but insisted on remaining with his battalion. He was killed at Monchy-le-Preux, near Arras, on the ninth of April, 1917, while leading his company in an attack.

All who knew Webster will remember the modesty which was one of the leading features of a most attractive personality. Even if he had lived to give the finishing touches to his translation, he would have been the first to depreciate its merits, and I cannot hope that, lacking as it does his final correction, it will be found free from error. But I think that the errors will not be found to be very serious ones, and it is a satisfaction, though a melancholy one, to give to the world this slight memorial of one who if he had lived would undoubtedly have made a considerable mark both as a teacher and as a student.

The translation has been based on Bekker’s quarto text, but in editing it I have made constant use of the valuable new edition of the Meteorologica by my former pupil Mr. F. H. Fobes, which gives with admirable completeness and precision the whole evidence for the text, and in very many respects improves on all previous editions.