A 1930 college speech marking 2,000 years since the Roman poet Vergil’s birth

Charles Grosvenor Osgood’s address takes on the question any such anniversary raises: why should a poet born two thousand years ago still matter? His answer, given to a college audience, is a reflection on the lasting worth of the classical past and of the Roman tradition in poetry, and on what both could still give readers in his own day.

It belongs to a year when the anniversary was being celebrated internationally, and it records how one American college took part. It is a short occasional piece rather than a full study, printed as a small commemorative book, and it will interest readers of classical scholarship, of speeches about literature and of the history of Vassar College.

This copy is slim, about 19 centimetres tall, in its original dark cloth with the title in gilt along the spine, printed on paper with deckle edges. The corners and spine ends are rubbed, and the leaves have a few scattered small spots.