Excerpt from Ovid, Vol. 2 of 6: Metamorphoses, With an English Translation In the poet's own judgment, however, the poem was not finished, and, in his despair on learning of his impending exile, his burned his manuscript. He himself tells us of his motive for this rash act (tristia, I. 7) On departing from Rome, I burned this poem as well as many others of my works, either because I was disgusted with poetry which had proved my bane, or because this poem was still rough and unfinished. But fortunately copies Of this great work still survived in the hands of friends and in this letter he begs his friends now to publish it, and at the same time he begs his readers to remember that the poem has never received its author's finishing touches and so to be lenient in their judgment Of it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.