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Cæsar had restored its corporate existence by making it a colonia, and much of the land had been allotted to veterans of his own and Pompey's armies. "TULLIUS, of all the sons of royal Rome That are, or have been, or are yet to come, Most skilled to plead, most learned in debate, Catullus hails thee, small as thou art great.

At Hammam R'irha, Burton began in earnest his translation of Catullus, and for weeks he was immersed in it night and day.

There is a new note, as there is a new rhythm in: Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. Julius Caesar had learned from bitter experience that poets were dangerous enemies. Cicero's innuendoes were disagreeable enough but they might be forgotten. When, however, Catullus and Calvus put them into biting epigrams there was no forgetting.

They were hated accordingly, but still this was expected. Was it because he had praised the Prime Minister's translation of Catullus? The African traveller chose himself by living through all his perils and coming home. A novelist was selected; but as royalty wanted another ticket at the last moment, the gentleman was only asked to come in after dinner.

Even Shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of minute observers. In this mention of lyrical poetry I have not spoken of Catullus, unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the Augustan era. He was born 87 B.C., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated characters.

He thinks his success would have been greater had he forgotten himself more. This egotism was probably not wanting to his poetry, but much may be excused him on account of his youth. Besides short elegies like those of Catullus, he wrote an epic called Io, as well as lampoons against Pompey and other leading men. We possess none of his fragments.

His acuteness of perception and his graceful versatility enabled him to excel in irony and in the vein of tale-telling which we find in Horace and Boccaccio, in the humorous pleasantries of love and song which are presented in Catullus and in the good popular songs of Naples, above all in the lower comedy and in farce.

It is not even satisfactorily accounted for by supposing that the young poet was somewhat slavishly following some Hellenistic model. Catullus had paraphrased the Alexandrian poets, but he could hardly have inserted a passage of this import. Nor was it mere flattery, for Vergil has shown in his frank praise of Cato, Brutus, and Pompey that he does not merely write at command.

Such a treatment of a woman of social station would be in line with the customs of the "new poets," Catullus, Calvus, and Ticidas, rather than of the Augustans, Gallus, Propertius, and Tibullus.

The descriptive poems of Catullus are superior to the others, and discover a lively imagination. Amongst the best of his productions, is a translation of the celebrated ode of Sappho: Ille mi par esse Deo videtur, me, etc. This ode is executed both with spirit and elegance; it is, however, imperfect; and the last stanza seems to be spurious.