in expression, but their coarseness and ribaldry unfit them for translation. At their worst, however, they are not of that pestilent order which influence the senses through the imagination; for it has been truly remarked "that the filth of Catullus seldom springs from a prurient imagination revelling in voluptuous images; it rather proceeds from habitual impurity of expression, and probably gives a fair representation of the manners and conversation of the gay society of Rome at that period." But within the compass of a small volume Catullus has touched a great variety of themes, and always with wonderful freshness and grace. His lighter pieces are distinguished by genuine feeling, a clear and pointed style, and peculiar elegance of expression. He is full of vivacity and sparkle, never tedious, and always suggestive. He draws with a firm hand, and colours to the life. We see what he describes. His friends live for us. We feel as he feels. We share his likes and dislikes. Impulsive, irascible, intense, wayward, and hasty, but at all times hearty, frankly spoken, generous, and manly, it is impossible not to be drawn towards him, and to forget his faults in our sympathy with his warm heart and thoroughly genial temperament. It is easy to see that he was just the man to attach friends warmly to him, and to be thoroughly detested and feared by all the pretentious charlatans and scoundrels of Rome, who had either felt or dreaded that they might one day feel the lash of his satire.

But it is not merely as the fervent amorist and brilliant writer of vers de société, the Moore or Praed of the latter days of the Republic, that Catullus claims our admiration. In hist longer and weightier poems he stands alone and unsurpassed.

The Atys is by all but universal consent admitted to be the finest poem in Roman literature, as unquestionably it is unique in subject and treatment. Whether copied from the Greek or not, Catullus has impressed upon it the stamp of his own genius. In passion and pathos and picturesque vigour, as well as in marvellous power and variety of diction and rhythmical cadence, it must always rank among the few unapproachable masterworks of genius. His poem on the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, again, is scarcely less admirable. From first to last it maintains a high level of imaginative power. The opening picture of the Nereids peering up in wonder at the adventurous Argonauts, who were the first to break the solitude of their ocean haunts, takes us at once into the clearest and brightest region of poetical romance, and there the poet keeps us to the close, passing before us picture after picture of the most admirable beauty, and swaying us at his will upon the waves of passion or of pathos. In this poem Catullus shows himself as great a master of the full-toned and stately hexameter, as in his smaller poems he had proved his command of the lighter forms of verse. He paved the way for the more smooth and stately measures of Virgil, whose admiration for his powers is shown in the fact that he did not disdain to borrow from him both in idea and in expression. In quite another strain, but of equal excellence, is the poem on the marriage of Julia and Manlius, which paints a larger and more vivid series of pictures than were ever presented within the same space in any language. And in these pictures what life, what grouping, what variety, what atmosphere, what colour! As we read we seem to see the figures of a Flaxman pass

before us, steeped in the warm hues of a Titian or Paul Veronese. For exquisite beauty of expression, too, this poem cannot be surpassed. Of no Latin poem can it be said more truly than of this, that it has "lutes in the lines." Such excellence, at a time when the language with which he had to deal was comparatively crude and unrefined, could not have been attained without infinite pains and study. The music of the Greek tongue had sunk deeply into the soul of Catullus, but it met a kindred inspiration there. He is no servile copyist. The rhythm of the verse, the turns of phrase, the choice of language, savour of the Greek; but the character of his thought, every feature in his descriptionsthe local colouring, as it were, of all—are essentially Roman.

It has been supposed that many of the poems of Catullus have been lost. But if this be so, is it really to be regretted? The fragments quoted by grammarians are so few, that we cannot have lost many poems; and Time, the great winnower, has left us, in all probability, what alone was worth preserving. Our only wish is, that the text had come down to us in a purer state. The MSS., all derived from one parent codex, and that not earlier than the fourteenth century, are very corrupt. Neither has the ingenuity of scholars been often successful in eliciting by a self-evident emendation the autograph of the poet from the rubbish of the medieval scribe. The text, until the recent editions, has been printed with the elegant but unsupported conjectures of the early scholars, which had acquired a sort of prescription. The disappearance of these is disappointing to those who have been familiar with them ever since they learned to admire Catullus; and although we may acquiesce in the justice of

their banishment, we cannot part with them without regret as old friends, who made a text intelligible which now appears in all its authentic dirt and raggedness. In making the following version the translator has availed himself of the editions of Heyse and Rossbach, but he has for the most part followed the text of Doering.

*

Catullus has been several times translated in France. The versions by Pezay and Noel are best known. They are both in prose, and of little value as translations. Every passage of peculiar difficulty is either slurred over or disguised in meaningless periphrasis. But the notes to the work of Noel are valuable, and peculiarly interesting, from the great number of translations and imitations in verse in various languages which he has brought together. As might have been expected, the spirit of the lighter pieces is often admirably transfused into French verse; but in the more weighty poems its power of reproduction altogether fails.

Catullus has not been without influence on our English literature. His love poems have been again and again copied and translated; and many instances of this from our old poets will be found in the Notes at the end of the present volume. In 1707, translations by " eminent hands" of a large portion of his poems appeared in a volume, professedly taken from the French, called The Adventures of Catullus and History of his Amours with Lesbia, executed as vilely as translations by "eminent hands" always were executed. In 1795, a version of all the poems was published

*Catull's Buch der Lieder. Text und Uebersetzung von Theodor Heyse. Berlin, 1855. Q. Valerii Catulli Veronensis Liber. Recognovit Augustus Rossbach. Lipsiæ, 1860.

by Dr. Nott, accompanied by excellent notes. The author started with the hopeless ambition of endeavouring "to convey our poet's meaning in its fullest extent without overstepping the modesty of language." This resulted, as it could scarcely fail to do, in his often catching the indelicacy while he missed the emphasis of Catullus in those poems which had much better have been left under the veil of a dead language. Dr. Nott possessed neither the lightness of touch nor the metrical skill which are essential to the reproduction of his author. In 1821, a version of Catullus was published by the Hon. George Lamb, which eclipsed Dr. Nott's in vigour and poetical feeling, and is, in fact, a most scholarly and agreeable production. Mr. Lamb attempted all the poems. But of course he could only do so by resorting in many cases to the mildest paraphrase. In these, therefore, it was not Catullus which was presented, but the graceful sarcasms of a well-bred gentleman of the days of the Regency. Nothing was or can be gained by such a mode of treatment, and yet, from the very nature of the case, it must be resorted to, or the idea of a version of all the poems abandoned. The present translator has therefore omitted all those poems which could not be reproduced with only the slightest modifications. Of Mr. Lamb's translation, in other respects, he would not venture to speak except in terms of admiration. It is always graceful, and often vigorous. But the influence of Pope upon his style is too strongly apparent. The directness and simplicity of Catullus are often sacrificed for an antithesis, or those poetical commonplaces which are wholly foreign to the genius of antiquity, and from which the public has since been emancipated by the influence of a better school.