But with affectionate natures like that of Catullus, the memory is not silenced by the barrier which divides the yearning spirit from its kind. The last adieu is a figure of speech which a thousand reminiscences falsify. The forlorn brother tries to solace himself with tender allusions to his bereavement whenever he is sending a missive to some congenial spirit, or inditing epistles of sympathy to a patron in kindred sorrow. What can be sweeter than his lines to Hortalus which accompanied the translation of his Alexandrian model, Callimachus's poem on "Berenice's Hair," to which we shall have to refer again; or his allusion to the same loss in the elegiacs to Manlius, when he undertook the difficult task of consoling with an elegy one whom he gifted erewhile with the most glowing of epithalamia? There is one allusion also to the same topic in the verses to M. Acilius Glabrio, breathing the same acute sense of desolation, and deploring the destiny that ordains their ashes to lie beneath the soils of different continents. It may suffice to cite Theodore Martin's version of the allusion, in the lines to Hortalus, to the brother so soundly sleeping by the Rhætean shore in Trojan earth :

"Oh ! is thy voice for ever hushed and still?
O brother, dearer far than life, shall I
Behold thee never? But in sooth I will
For ever love thee, as in days gone by;
And ever through my songs shall ring a cry
Sad with thy death-sad as in thickest shade
Of intertangled boughs the melody,
Which by the woful Daulian bird is made,
Sobbing for Itys dead her wail through all the glade."

—(C. lxv.)

In the like allusion of the poem to Manlius we are told further that the brother's death has had the effect of turning mirth to gloom, taking light and sun from the dwelling, and robbing home of the charm of mutual studies and fraternal unity. Even in modern times, a recent poet of the second rank is perhaps best remembered by his touching lyrics on "My Brother's Grave," and may have got the first breath of inspiration from the Roman poet, who, as he tells us in the 67th poem, retired for self-converse and the society of his despair to the rural retreats of Verona. Perhaps in such isolation it is well to be broken in upon; perhaps it is the sense that comes upon one, after a course of enforced loneliness, that one's books, treasures, haunts (as with Catullus) are in town, that makes the mourner see the folly of unavailing sorrow, and strive to shake it off, though, in his case, with too little health for achieving his task successfully.

A.C.S.S., vol. iii.

D

CHAPTER IV.

CATULLUS AMONG MEN OF LITERATURE.

THOUGH We have just seen Catullus bidding fair to sink into despondency, there is no reason to suppose that this state of spirits at once, or ever entirely, shut out gayer moods upon occasion, much less that it put an end to social intercourse with those literary compeers of whom in his brief life the poet had no lack. When at Rome he contrived to amuse himself by no means tristely, if we may accept the witness of one or two lively pieces that seem to belong to the period after the Bithynian campaign, and to the closing years of his career. One stray piece-"To Camerius" (C. liv.) -gives a little hint of the company he kept, and the manner in which his days were frittered away, even when a cloud had overshadowed his life. It is a playful rallying of an associate of lighter vein upon the nature of his engagements and rendezvous, and affords a glimpse of Roman topography not so common in Catullus as could have been wished. Wishing to track his friend to his haunts, the poet says he sought him in the Campus Minor, which would seem to have been a distinct division of the

Campus Martius, in the bend of the Tiber to the north of the Circus Flaminius, and to have represented a familiar portion of the great Roman park and race-course. In the Circus, also, and in the book-shops, in the hallowed Temple of Capitoline Jupiter at no great distance from the same public resort, as well as in the Promenade and Portico of Pompey the Great, lying to the south of the Campus Martius, and attached to the Theatre of Pompey built by him in his second consulship B.C. 55 (and so now in the height of fashion and novelty), Catullus has sought his friend, but can nowhere get an inkling of him. But for the mention of the book-stalls, we might have passed by the whereabouts of Camerius, as the nature of the poet's inquiries implies that the truant was pleasantly engaged in a congenial flirtation, which he had the good sense to keep to himself. The sequel, however, of the verses of Catullus goes to prove that he was himself alive to the same amusements as his friend, and would have been well pleased to have been of his company. The grievance was that the search proved fruitless. His Alexandrian myth - lore furnishes him half- a dozen standards of fleetness to which he professes to have attained-Talus, Ladas, Perseus, Pegasus, and the steeds of Rhesus-and yet he has not overtaken Camerius, but had to chew the cud of his disappointment, besides being tired and footsore.

But it would be a mistake to argue systematic frivolity from casual glimpses of days wasted, upon a lively poet's own showing. On the other side of the

scale may be counted the names of learned and witty contemporaries-known like himself to fame-with whom Catullus was in familiar intercourse. Foremost perhaps we should set Cornelius Nepos and Cicero the former, because to him Catullus dedicates his collected volume; the latter, for the very complimentary terms in which he rates the chief of orators, albeit the sorriest of poets. Lest there should be any doubt in the face of internal evidence as to the identity of Cornelius with him of the surname familiar to schoolboys, it may be noted that this is set at rest by a later poet, Ausonius; but the verses of dedication evince a lively interest in the historian and biographer, whose 'Epitome of Universal History' has not survived the wreck of ages, whilst the lives which we read, with the exception of that of Atticus, are simply an epitome of the work of Nepos. The gracefullyturned compliment of the poet, however, will show the store he sets by his friend's literary labours and erudition and it is best represented by Theodore Martin :-

"My little volume is complete,
Fresh pumice-polished, and as neat
As book need wish to be;

And now, what patron shall I choose
For these gay sallies of my Muse?
Cornelius, whom but thee?

For though they are but trifles, thou
Some value didst to them allow,

And that from thee is fame,