The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 52

of the aged Parcae--

infirmo quatientes corpora motu--

spinning the thread of human destiny, as with clear-ringing voice they poured forth their truthful prophecy. So too the eye of an artist is shown in the description of the scenes in which the action takes place, and in the ill.u.s.trative imagery with which the subject is adorned,--as in the pictures from mountain and sea scenery at lines 240 and 269; and in that image of a waste expanse of sea called up in the lines--

Idomeneosne petam montes? a gurgite lato Discernens ponti truculentum ubi dividit aequor?

A genuine love of Nature, which his more personal poems only faintly suggest, appears in the lines describing the gifts which Chiron brought with him from the plains and vast mountain chains and river-banks of Thessaly--

Nam quosc.u.mque ferunt campi, quos Thessala magnis Montibus ora creat, quos propter fluminis undas Aura parit flores tepidi fecunda Favoni, Hos indistinctis plexos tulit ipse corollis, Quo permulsa domus iucundo risit odore[72];

and in the enumeration of the various trees which Peneus, quitting Tempe,--

Tempe quae silvae cingunt super inpendentes,--

planted before the vestibule of the palace.

The diction and rhythm of the poem are characterised by excellences of a quite different sort from those of his other pieces. Both produce the impression of very careful study and labour. In no previous work of Latin genius was so much use made of an artificial poetical diction. Though this diction has not the _navete_ or charm of his simpler pieces, yet it is very effective in its own way. It reveals new and unsuspected wealth in the ore of the Latin language. The old rhetorical artifices of alliteration, a.s.sonance, etc. are used more sparingly than in Lucretius, yet they do appear, as in the lines--

Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,--

Aut tereti tenues tinnitus aere ciebant,--

Putridaque infirmis variabant pectora palmis.--etc., etc.

As in the Attis we find such word-formations as _sonipedibus_, _silvicultrix_, _nemorivagus_, so in this poem we have _fluentisono_, _raucisonos_, _clarisona_, _flexamino_, etc. We recognise his old partiality for diminutives, as in the

Frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem,

and

Languidulosque paret tec.u.m coniungere somnos.

But there are many peculiarities of style which are scarcely, if at all, observable in his other poems. New artifices, such as those familiar to the Greek idyll, of the recurring chime of the same or similar words, are frequent, as in the lines--

Vos ego saepe meo vos carmine compellabo;--

Cui Iupiter ipse Ipse suos divom genitor concessit amores;--

Sicine me patriis avectam, perfide, ab oris, Perfide, deserto liquisti in litore Theseu?

Sicine discedens neglecto numine divom;--

Nulla fugae ratio, nulla spes; omnia muta Omnia sunt deserta, ostentant omnia mortem, etc.

The phrases are to a much greater extent cast in a Greek mould[73].

The words follow one another in a less natural order. Ornamental epithets, metaphorical phrases, and the subst.i.tution of abstract for concrete words, occur much more frequently. Latin poetry creates for itself an artificial diction by a.s.similating, to a much greater extent than in any earlier work of genius, the long-acc.u.mulated wealth of Greek poetry. This was a gain to its resources, opening up and giving expression to a new range of emotions, but a gain against which must be set off a considerable loss of freshness and _navete_.

The rhythm also is elaborately constructed after a Greek model,--the model, not of Homer, but of the later poets who wrote in his metre.

It is much more carefully and correctly finished than the rhythm of Lucretius. Each separate line has a smoother cadence. The whole movement is more regular, more calm, and more stately. But with all the occasional roughness of Lucretius there is much more life and force in his general movement. It is much more capable of presenting a continuous thought or action to the mind. The lines of Catullus seem intended to be dwelt on separately, and each to bring out some point of detail. There is generally a pause in the sense at the end of each line, and thus the lines, when read continuously, produce an impression of monotony[74], which is increased by the frequent use of spondaic lines. The uniformity of his pauses, and the sameness of structure in a large number of his hexameters, enable us to appreciate the great improvement in rhythmical art which appeared some ten years later in the Bucolics of Virgil. Yet if Catullus does not, in this his most elaborate work, equal the natural force of language and rhythm displayed in his simpler pieces, the poem, as a whole, has a n.o.ble and stately movement, in unison with the n.o.ble and stately pictures of an ideal fore-time which it brings before the imagination.

The four longer elegiac pieces which follow add little to our impression of the art of Catullus. In the 'Epistle to Manlius'--perhaps owing to the trouble by which his mind was darkened at the time of its composition--he does not use the elegiac metre, as a vehicle of his personal feelings, with much force or clearness.

There is much more than in his phalaecians and iambics the appearance of effort, and there is much greater uncertainty as to his meaning.

The 67th poem keeps alive with some vivacity a scandalous story of his native province which might well have been allowed to sink into oblivion. In the 'Coma Berenices,' and the poem addressed to Allius, he again writes under the influence of his Alexandrian masters. He seems to have regarded the 'Carmina Battiadae' with the admiration which youthful genius, not yet sure of its own powers, entertains for culture and established reputation,--the kind of admiration which led Burns to imagine that his own early inspiration might be of less value to the world than 'Shenstone's art.' Like Burns, too, Catullus is least happy when he gives up his own language, which he wields easily and powerfully, and the forms of art which came naturally to him, in deference to the standard of poetic taste recognised in his day.

His selection of the 'Coma Berenices' as a task in translation, ill.u.s.trates the attraction which the union of beauty and pa.s.sion with truth and constancy of affection had for his imagination. The poem to Allius is the most artificially constructed of all his pieces. He endeavours to unite in it three distinct threads of interest,--that of his pa.s.sion for Lesbia, that of the romance of Laodamia and Protesilaus, and that of his brother's death in the Troad. Although this triple combination is accomplished with much mechanical ingenuity[75], yet the effect of the poem as a whole is disappointing, and its motive,--grat.i.tude for a service which no honourable man, according to our modern ideas of honour, would have rendered,--does not make amends for the want of simplicity in its structure. Yet as written in the heyday of his pa.s.sion for Lesbia, and largely inspired by that pa.s.sion, it has, along with an Alexandrian superfluity of ornament and ill.u.s.tration, many beauties of expression and feeling.

The pa.s.sionate devotion of Laodamia for Protesilaus is conceived with sympathetic power,--

Quo tibi tum casu pulcherrima Laudamia, Ereptum est vita dulcius atque anima Coniugium[76].

There is an exquisite picture of his own stolen meetings with his 'candida diva'; and depth and sincerity of affection are purely and simply expressed in the last two lines--

Et longe ante omnes mihi quae me carior ipse'st, Lux mea qua viva vivere dulce mihi'st.

In this poem too, although the application of the image is an incongruous adaptation of an old Homeric simile, we meet with a descriptive pa.s.sage which, more perhaps than any other in his poems, shows that Catullus was a true lover and close observer of Nature,--

Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis Rivos muscoso prosilit e lapide Qui c.u.m de p.r.o.na praeceps est valle volutus Per medium sensim transit iter populi, Dulce viatori la.s.so in sudore levamen, c.u.m gravis exustos aestus hiulcat agros[77].

The perfection attained by Catullus in his best lyrical poetry, and the power displayed in his longer pieces, are so high and genuine that we are hardly surprised at the enthusiasm of those who have ranked him, in respect both of art and genius, foremost among Roman poets. If the pure essence of poetry could be separated from the whole spiritual and intellectual being of the poet, much might be said in favour of that estimate. Others, who think that the work accomplished by Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace is, both in quant.i.ty and quality, of more lasting value to the world, cannot forget that had they died at the same early age as Catullus, their names would have been unknown, or perhaps remembered as those of Cinna and Cornificius are now. From the exquisite skill with which Catullus has treated light and playful themes, he has been sometimes compared to modern poets who have no other claim to recognition than a similar facility. But if he is to be compared with any, it is not with the minor poets, ancient or modern, but with the greater, that he is to be ranked. The two eminent English scholars who have made a special study of this poet, and have done more than almost any others in recent times to elucidate his meaning and gain for him his just recognition, look upon him as the equal of Sappho and Alcaeus. Among modern poets he has been compared to one, most unlike him in all the outward conditions of his life, and in many of the conditions of his art,--the poet Burns[78]. In general intellectual power, in the breadth of his human sympathies, the modern poet is much the greater. He is, in all ways, the larger man. But in some endowments of heart and genius the ancient poet is far from being the inferior. He was more fortunate in his nearness to the greatest source of poetic culture, and in the use of a medium of expression, not of a local and limited influence, but one which brings him into immediate relation with educated men of all ages and countries. But in the pa.s.sionate ardour of their temperament, and the robustness, too closely allied with coa.r.s.eness, of their fibre; in their susceptibility to beautiful and tender emotions, and the mobility of nature with which they yielded to impulses the most opposite to these; in their large capacity of love and scorn, of pleasure and pain; in their genuine sincerity and firm hold on real life; in the keenness of their satire, and their shrewd observation of the world around them;--in their simple and direct force of feeling and expression; in the freshness of their love for the fairer objects in Nature with which they were most familiar,--they have much in common. The resemblance of the concluding lines of the 'Final renunciation of Lesbia' to the sentiment of the 'Daisy' has been already noticed. The scornful advice, conveyed in the words 'pete n.o.biles amicos,' finds many an echo in the tones of the modern poet. The art of both is so inseparably a.s.sociated with their lives, that our admiration of it can hardly help being enhanced or qualified by personal sympathy with, or dislike of their characters. In the case of Catullus it must be allowed that if a careless pursuit of pleasure, an apparent absence of all high aims in life, the too frequent indulgence in the coa.r.s.est language and the vilest imputations, could alienate our affections from a great poet, his art would be judged at a disadvantage. But his own frank revelations, from which we learn his faults, must equally be taken as the unintended evidence of his n.o.bler and more generous nature. If his pa.s.sions led him too far astray, he himself, so far as now appears, alone suffered from them. There is no trace in him of the selfish calculation, or the baser falsehood, which renders 'the life of pleasure,' as led by many men, detestable. There was in his case no 'hardening of all within' as its effect. The small volume bequeathed by him to the world is in itself a sufficient result of his few years.

If he is in a great degree unreflective, if he does not consciously realise what are the ends of life, yet he does not look on life in a spirit of cynicism or frivolity. Whatever vein of reflection appears in him is not devoid of reverence and seriousness. His too frequent coa.r.s.eness is to be explained by the manners of his age and race; and the imputations which he makes on his enemies were, in all probability, never meant to be taken seriously. Although unfortunate in his love, he has shown a capacity of ardent, self-forgetful, and constant devotion, that deserved a better object. He could care for another more than for his own life and happiness. And he had, in a degree rarely equalled, a virtue which devoted lovers often want, the truest, kindliest, most considerate and appreciative affection for many friends. His very dependence on their sympathy in all his joy and sorrow is a claim on the sympathy of the world. If to love warmly, constantly, and unselfishly be the best t.i.tle to the love of others, few poets, in any age or country, deserve a kindlier place in the hearts of men than 'the young Catullus.'

[Footnote 1: Cf. 'L. Iulium Calidum, quem post Lucretii Catullique mortem multo elegantissimum poetam nostram tulisse aetatem vere videor posse contendere.'--Corn. Nep. Vit. Att.

12.]

[Footnote 2: 'Multa satis lusi.'--lxviii^a. 17. The context shows that the 'lusi,'--like Horace's 'lusit Anacreon,'--refers to the composition of amatory poetry founded on his own experience. It was for this kind of poetry that Manlius had applied to him, and he pleads his grief as an excuse for his inability to write any at that time, although he had written much in his earliest youth.]

[Footnote 3: E.g. xvi. 12; liv. 6.]

[Footnote 4: Martial iv. 14,--

Sic forsan tener ausus est Catullus Magno mittere pa.s.serem Maroni.

Ibid. xi. 6. 16,--

Donabo tibi pa.s.serem Catulli.]

[Footnote 5: B. Schmidt conjectures that the collection as we now have it was made after books were generally written in parchment. His whole collected poems would thus be more easily enclosed in a single volume, than when written on the old papyrus rolls.]

[Footnote 6: Three poems formerly attributed to Catullus,--those between xvii and xxi,--are now omitted from all editions. On the other hand, one poem, lxviii, must, in all probability, be divided into two, and possibly some lines now attached to others are parts of separate poems.]

[Footnote 7: Cf. B. Schmidt, quoting Bruner, Prolegomena, p.

xcviii.]

[Footnote 8: x. 6.]

[Footnote 9: xvii. 7; liii. 1; lvi. 1.]

[Footnote 10: ix.]