The Poems and Fragments of Catullus Part 20

Let me now the vices trace, From his father's scoundrel race.

What could give the looby such airs?

Were they masons? were they butchers?

TICKELL, _Theristes or the Lordling_, 23-26.

XXIII.

For a spirited, though coa.r.s.e, version of this poem, see Cotton's Poems, p. 608, ed. 1689.

6 _Lathy._

On a lathy horse, all legs and length.

BROWNING, _Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess_, v. 21.

XXIX. 8.

The connexion between Adonis and the dove is specially referred to by Diogenia.n.u.s (_Praef._ p. 180 in Leutsch and Schneidewin's _Paroemiographi Graeci_). It formed part of the legends of Cyprus, and was alluded to by the lyric poet Timocreon (_Bergk. Poetae Lyrici Graeci_, p. 1203). Compare Browning:--

Pompilia was no pigeon, Venus' Pet.

_Ring and Book_, v. 701.

x.x.xV. 7.

_So he'll quickly devour the way,_

move quickly over the road. So Shakespeare:

Starting so He seem'd in running to devour the way, Staying no longer question.

_2nd Part of Henry IV._, Act i. sc. 1.

x.x.xVII. 10.

_With scorpion I, with emblem all your haunt will scrawl._

A member of the Saraceni family at Vicenza, finding that a beautiful widow did not favour him, scribbled filthy pictures over the door. The affair was brought before the Council of Ten at Venice.

TROLLOPE'S _Paul the Pope_, p. 158.

XLIII. 3.

_Mouth scarce tenible,_

easily running over.

XLV. 7.

_A sulky lion._

Properly "green-eyed." The epithet would seem to be not merely picturesque; the glaring of the eyes would be more marked in proportion as the beast was in a fiercer and more excitable state.

LI. 5-12.

I watch thy grace; and in its place My heart a charmed slumber keeps, While I muse upon thy face; And a languid fire creeps Thro' my veins to all my frame, Dissolvingly and slowly: soon From thy rose-red lips my name Floweth; and then, as in a swoon, With dinning sound my ears are rife, My tremulous tongue faltereth, I lose my colour, I lose my breath, I drink the cup of a costly death, Brimmed with delicious draughts of warmest life.

TENNYSON, _Eleanore_.

LIV. 6.

_Yet thou flee'st not above my keen iambics_.

This line is quoted as Catullus's by Porphyrion on Hor. c. 1. 16, 24.

His words, _Catullus c.u.m maledicta minaretur_, compared with the last lines of this poem, _Irascere iterum meis iambis Inmerentibus, unice imperator_, seem to justify my view that they belong here. See my large edition, p. 217, fragm. I. The following line, _So may destiny, &c._, is a supplement of my own: it forms a natural introduction to the _Si non uellem_ of v. 10.

LV.

This is the only instance where Catullus has introduced a spondee into the second foot of the phalaecian, which then becomes decasyllabic. The alternation of this decasyllabic rhythm with the ordinary hendecasyllable is studiously artistic; I have retained it throughout.

In the series of dactylic lines 17-22, Catullus no doubt intended to convey the idea of rapidity, as, in the spondaic line immediately following, of labour.

4 _You on Circus, in all the bills but you, Sir._

There seems to be no authority for the meaning ordinarily a.s.signed to _libellis_, "book-shops." I prefer to explain the word placards, either announcing the sale of Camerius's effects, which would imply that he was in debt, or describing him as a lost article.

LXI.

In the rhythm of this poem, I have been obliged to deviate in two points from Catullus. (1) In him the first foot of each line is nearly always a trochee, only rarely a spondee: the monotonous effect of a positional trochee in English, to say nothing of the difficulty, induced me to subst.i.tute a spondee more frequently. (2) I have been rather less scrupulous in allowing the last foot of the glyconic lines to be a dactyl (-uu), in place of the more correct cretic (-u-).

108. The words in italics are a supplement of my own.

LXII. 39-61.

_Look in a garden croft, when a flower privily growing, &c._

_Opinion._ Look how a flower that close in closes grows, Hid from rude cattle, bruised with no ploughs, Which th' air doth stroke, sun strengthen, showers shoot higher, It many youths and many maids desire; The same, when cropt by cruel hand 'tis wither'd, No youths at all, no maidens have desired; So a virgin while untouch'd she doth remain Is dear to hers; but when with body's stain Her chaster flower is lost, she leaves to appear Or sweet to young men or to maidens dear.