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Updated: May 14, 2025
"It is long since I have read any of then; but Virgil and Apulius do, if I mistake not, speak of this power over the elements." "Do you not remember, father," said Rebecca, "some verses of Tibullus, in which he speaketh of a certain enchantress? Some one hath rendered them thus: "Her with charms drawing stars from heaven, I, And turning the course of rivers, did espy.
Read, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Write ten lines of Latin on writing days. Read five chapters of Greek Testament on reading days. For morning reading, either Polybius, or Diodorus Siculus, or some tracts of Xenophon or Plato; and for Latin, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. "Monday: write, morning; read Tasso, evening. Tuesday: Latin or Greek, morning; evening, theology.
Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but Merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope.
He had read Byron by stealth; he had been flogged into reading Ovid and Tibullus; and commanded by his private tutor to read Martial and Juvenal 'for the improvement of his style. All conversation on the subject of love had been prudishly avoided, as usual, by his parents and teacher. The parts of the Bible which spoke of it had been always kept out of his sight.
The two poets died in the same year, and a contemporary epigram speaks of them as the recognised masters of heroic and elegiac verse; while the well known tribute of Ovid, in the third book of the Amores, shows that the death of Tibullus was regarded as an overwhelming loss by the general world of letters.
It gave him no satisfaction to pour out wine, burn incense, arrange garlands, and even cut the throats of animals according to a correct Pagan ritual. It was nothing to him that Horace and Ovid and Tibullus should have done alike. He was a good Christian, never doubting for a moment the power of the Blessed Virgin, the saints, and even the smallest and meanest priest, nor the heat of hell-fire.
Porson, in his witty Panegyrical Epistle on Hawkins v. Henry IV, act iv. sc. 5. 'Tibullus addressed Cynthia in this manner: "Te spectem, suprema, mihi cum venerit hora, Te teneam moriens deficiente mamu. Lib. i. El. Before my closing eyes dear Cynthia stand, Held weakly by my fainting, trembling hand." Johnson's Works, iv. 35. He was in Parliament, but he had never spoken.
Where is the blooming cheek, ruddy with the browning air? where the bright and swimming eye? Alas where? `Tum breviter dirae mortis aperta via est, as sweet Tibullus hath it;" and the Dominie sobbed anew.
The rhythm of Tibullus is smooth, easy, and graceful, but tame. He generally concludes his period at the end of the couplet, and closes the couplet with a dissyllable; but he does not like Ovid make it an invariable rule. The diction is severely classical, free from Greek constructions and antiquated harshness.
If he excels Tibullus in vigor of fancy, expression, and coloring, he is inferior to him in grace, spontaneity, and delicacy; he cannot, also, be compared with Catullus, who greatly surpasses him in his easy and effective style. A skeptic and an epicurean, he lived a life of continual indulgence and intrigue. He was a universal admirer of the female sex, and a favorite among women.
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