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It marks the culmination of Latin poetry, as the last epoch marks the perfection of Latin prose. But the bloom which had been so long expanding was short-lived in proportion to its sweetness; and perfect as is the art of Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus, within a few years of Horace's death both style and thought had entered on the path of irretrievable decline.
There are men and women in books, who seem more really alive to us than men and women who have lived and died Richardson's Clarissa, Chenier's Camille, the Delia of Tibullus, Ariosto's Angelica, Dante's Francesca, Moliere's Alceste, Beaumarchais' Figaro, Scott's Rebecca the Jewess, the Don Quixote of Cervantes, do we not owe these deathless creations to immortal throes?"
Among other things I was particularly pleased with some elegies, in imitation of Tibullus; one of which I beg leave to submit to the reader as a specimen of his complexion and capacity: Where now are all my flattering dreams of joy? Monimia, give my soul her wonted rest; Since first thy beauty fixed my roving eye, heart-gnawing cares corrode my pensive breast!
I paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in my pocket, eyeing the stall, two appetites at combat within me. The book was bought and I went home with it, and as I made a dinner of bread and butter I gloated over the pages. In this Tibullus I found pencilled on the last page: "Perlegi, Oct. 4, 1792." Who was that possessor of the book, nearly a hundred years ago? There was no other inscription.
I like to imagine some poor scholar, poor and eager as I myself, who bought the volume with drops of his blood, and enjoyed the reading of it even as I did. How much that was I could not easily say. Gentle-hearted Tibullus! of whom there remains to us a poet's portrait more delightful, I think, than anything of the kind in Roman literature.
To that main wish, I will add those of the good old nurse of Horace, in his epistle to Tibullus: 'Sapere', you have it in a good degree already. 'Et fari ut possit quae sentiat'. Have you that? More, much more is meant by it, than common speech or mere articulation. I fear that still remains to be wished for, and I earnestly wish it to you.
To this age also belong the collection of epigrams on Priapus called Priapea, and including many poems attributed to Virgil, Tibullus, and Ovid. They are mostly of an obscene character, but some few, especially those by Tibullus and Catullus which close the series, are simple and pretty.
"Well, well, Messieurs," said he, bursting out at last into open voice, "I will ever believe, in future, that the gods do look benignantly on us worshippers of the Alma Venus! Do you know much of Tibullus, Monsieur Devereux? And can you assist my memory with the continuation of the line "'Quisquis amore tenetur, eat " "'tutusque sacerque Qualibet, insidias non timuisse decet,"* answered I.
They will often be called into active exercise by the many vicissitudes of the married life. They will, perhaps, be still more needed when the closest of human ties is severed by the great Divorce of Death. Tibullus. Galton's Hereditary Genius, pp. 357-8.
His object in coming to England, he assured me honestly, was to study certain editions of Tibullus in the British Museum. When he deigned to speak of Sarkeld, it was to say that Prince Hermann was frequently there. I gave him no chance to be sly, though he pushed for it, at a question of the Princess Ottilia's health. The funeral pace of the block of cabs and omnibuses engrossed his attention.
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