Of the autobiographic writings the most important are (1) Poetry and Truth from my Life, which ends with the year 1775; (2) Italian Journey, covering the period from September, 1786, to June, 1788; (3) Campaign in France and Siege of Antwerp, dealing with episodes of the years 1792 and 1793; (4) Annals (Tag- und Jahreshefte), which are useful for his later years down to 1823.

For the western counties the published annals concerning slavery are brief wellnigh to blankness.

The annals of the Sung dynasty became the largest of all the historical works, but they were fiercely attacked from the first by Chinese critics on account of their style and their hasty composition, and, together with the annals of the Mongol dynasty, they are regarded as the worst of the annals preserved.

Owing to the interest of the subject especially for aristocratic circles, and the great plastic talent of the poet, the Annals remained the oldest Roman original poem which appeared to the culture of later generations readable or worth reading; and thus, singularly enough, posterity came to honour this thoroughly anti- national epos of a half-Greek -litterateur- as the true model poem of Rome.

On the whole the Annals were beyond question the work in which Ennius fell farthest short of his aim.

Young's Annals was an elaborate agricultural periodical not unlike in some respects publications of this sort to-day except for its lack of advertising.