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However, to Catullus he now turned. Sirmio and Rome succeeded to Baghdad and Damascus; jinni and ghoul fled before hoofed satyrs and old Silenus shaking his green stick of lilies. As we shall see, however, he did not begin the translation in earnest till January 1890. Mr. A. G. Ellis and Professor Blumhardt. 5th June 1886-5th April 1887.
During a Continental tour Tennyson visited Catullus's Sirmio: "here he made his Frater Ave atque Vale," and the poet composed his beautiful salutation to the "Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago." In 1880 Ballads and other Poems proved that, like Titian, the great poet was not to be defeated by the years. The First Quarrel was in his most popular English style.
The shores abound in the wild and majestic, in variety and beauty of local tints, and picturesque vicissitudes of light and shade; while the olive-crowned Sirmio, like the island-realm of a Calypso, reposes in regal pride upon the waters, and seems to hold in vassalage the opposite shores and amphitheatre of mountains.
The peninsula of Sirmio lay basking in sunny radiance before us; and the mountains beyond displayed the grandeur of their immeasurable outline, varied by prominent and rugged masses, which were piled up in chaos like Ossa on Pelion.
Some persons grow angry with him for a certain tone of half-gay, half-sad, allusive tenderness, when he speaks of Oxford and the country round Oxford. I do not think there is anything unpleasing in this. So did Catullus talk of Sirmio; Horace of his Farm; Milton of "Deva's wizard-stream"; Landor of Sorrento and Amalfi.
Verona, the poet's birthplace, "Sweet Sirmio," his home on the long narrow peninsula that cleaves Garda's "limpid lake," Brescia, "below the Cycnaean peak," the "dimpling waters" of heavenly Como, and the estate of Caecilius; all were familiar to him.
They are the best known, the best finished, and the most popular of all his compositions; the four to Lesbia, the one to Sirmio, and that on Acme and Septimus, are perhaps the most perfect lyrics in the Latin language; and others are scarcely inferior to them in elegance. The hendecasyllabic rhythm, in which the greater part are written, is the one best suited to display the poet's special gifts.
The excitement of travel and the delight of return have never been more gracefully touched than in these little lyrics, of which every other line has become a household word, the Iam ver egelidos refert tepores, and the lovely Paene insularum Sirmio insularumque, whose cadences have gathered a fresh sweetness in the hands of Tennyson.
The scene was a garden saloon, and through an open window an extensive view over the lake of Garda arrested with magic power the eye of every beholder. Sirmio appeared like a woody island in the middle distance, and beyond the lake rose an amphitheatre of mountains, surmounted by the distant summits of the Tyrolese Alps. There was in this admirable portrait all the charm and witchery of life.
Landor is great, too, but in another kind; the bees that hummed over Plato's cradle have left their honey on his lips; none but Landor, or a Greek, could have written this on Catullus: "Tell me not what too well I know About the Bard of Sirmio Yes, in Thalia's son Such stains there are as when a Grace Sprinkles another's laughing face With nectar, and runs on!"
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