In every part of our survey of Latin Literature, we have had occasion to remark the imitative spirit of Roman poetry, and the constant analogy and resemblance of all the productions of the Latian muse to some Greek original. None of his poetical predecessors was more versed in Greek literature than Catullus; and his extensive knowledge of its beauties procured for him the appellation of Doctus458. He translated [pg 272]many of the shorter and more delicate pieces of the Greeks; an attempt which hitherto had been thought impossible, though the broad humour of their comedies, the vehement pathos of their tragedies, and the romantic interest of the Odyssey, had stood the transformation. His stay in Bithynia, though little advantageous to his fortune, rendered him better acquainted than he might otherwise have been with the productions of Greece, and he was therefore, in a great degree, indebted to this expedition (on which he always appears to have looked back with mortification and disappointment) for those felicitous turns of expression, that grace, simplicity, and purity, which are the characteristics of his poems, and of which hitherto Greece alone had afforded models. Indeed, in all his verses, whether elegiac or heroic, we perceive his imitation of the Greeks, and it must be admitted that he has drawn from them his choicest stores. His Hellenisms are frequent—his images, similes, metaphors, and addresses to himself, are all Greek; and even in the versification of his odes we see visible traces of their origin. Nevertheless, he was the founder of a new school of Latin poetry; and as he was the first who used such variety of measures, and perhaps himself invented some459, he was amply [pg 273]entitled to call the poetical volume which he presented to Cornelius Nepos, Lepidum Novum Libellum. The beautiful expressions, too, and idioms of the Greek language, which he has so carefully selected, are woven with such art into the texture of his composition, and so aptly figure the impassioned ideas of his amorous muse, that they have all the fresh and untarnished hues of originality.

This elegant poet was born of respectable parents, in the territory of Verona, but whether at the town so called, or on the peninsula of Sirmio, which projects into the Lake Benacus, has been a subject of much controversy. The former opinion has been maintained by Maffei and Bayle460, and the latter by Gyraldus461, Schoell462, Fuhrmann463, and most modern writers.

The precise period, as well as place, of the birth of Catullus, is a topic of debate and uncertainty. According to the Eusebian Chronicle, he was born in 666, but, according to other authorities, in 667464 or 668. In consequence of an invitation from Manlius Torquatus, one of the noblest patricians of the state, he proceeded in early youth to Rome, where he appears to have kept but indifferent company, at least in point of moral character. He impaired his fortune so much by extravagance, that he had no one, as he complains,

This, however, must partly have been written in jest, as his finances were always sufficient to allow him to keep up a delicious villa, on the peninsula of Sirmio, and an expensive residence at Tibur. With a view of improving his pecuniary circumstances, he adopted the usual Roman mode of re-establishing a diminished fortune, and accompanied Caius Memmius, the celebrated patron of Lucretius, to Bithynia, when he was appointed Prætor of that province. His situation, however, was but little meliorated by this expedition, and, in the course of it, he lost a beloved brother, who was along with him, and whose death he has lamented in verses never surpassed in delicacy or pathos. He came back to Rome with a shattered constitution, and a lacerated heart. From the period of his return to Italy till his decease, his time appears to have been chiefly occupied with the prosecution of licentious amours, in the capital or among the solitudes of Sirmio. The Eusebian Chronicle places his death in 696, and some writers fix it in 705. It is evident, however, that he must have survived at least till 708, as Cicero, in his Letters, talks of his verses against Cæsar and Mamurra as newly written, and first seen by Cæsar in that year465. The distracted and unhappy state of his country, and his disgust at the treatment which he had received from Memmius, were perhaps sufficient excuse for shunning political employments466; but when we consider his taste and genius, we cannot help regretting that he was merely an idler, and a debauchee. He loved Clodia, (supposed to have been the sister of the infamous Clodius,) a beautiful but shameless woman, whom he has [pg 275]celebrated under the name of Lesbia467, as comparing her to the Lesbian Sappho, her prototype in total abandonment to guilty love. He also numbered among his mistresses, Hypsithilla and Aufilena, ladies of Verona. Among his friends, he ranked not only most men of pleasure and fashion in Rome, but many of her eminent literary and political characters, as Cornelius Nepos, Cicero, and Asinius Pollio. His enmities seem to have been as numerous as his loves or friendships, and competition in poetry, or rivalship in gallantry, appears always to have been a sufficient cause for his dislike; and where an antipathy was once conceived, he was unable to put any restraint on the expression of his hostile feelings. His poems are chiefly employed in the indulgence and commemoration of these various passions. They are now given to us without any order or attempt at arrangement: They were distributed, indeed, by Petrus Crinitus, into three classes, lyric, elegiac, and epigrammatic,—a division which has been adopted in a few of the earlier editions; but there is no such separation in the best MSS., nor is it probable that they were originally thus classed by the author, as he calls his book Libellum Singularem; and they cannot now be conveniently reduced under these heads, since several poems, as the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, are written in hexameter measure. To others, which may be termed occasional poems expressing to his friends a simple idea, or relating the occurrences of the day, in iambic or phalangian verse, it would be difficult to assign any place in a systematic arrangement. Under what class, for instance, could we bring the poem giving a detail of his visit to the house of the courtezan, and the conversation which passed there concerning Bithynia? The order, therefore, in which the poems have been arbitrarily placed by the latest editors and commentators, however immethodical, is the only one which can be followed, in giving an account of the miscellaneous productions of Catullus.

1. Is a modest and not inelegant dedication, by the poet, of the whole volume, to Cornelius Nepos, whom he compliments on having written a general history, in three books, an undertaking which had not previously been attempted by any Roman—

2. Ad Passerem Lesbiæ. This address of Catullus to the favourite sparrow of his mistress, Lesbia, is well known, and, [pg 276]has been always celebrated as a model of grace and elegance. Politian468, Turnebus, and others, have discovered in this little poem an allegorical signification, which idea has been founded on a line in an epigram of Martial, Ad Romam et Dindymum—

That by the passer Catulli, however, Martial meant nothing more than an agreeable little epigram, in the style of Catullus, which he would address to Dindymus as his reward, is evident from another epigram, where it is obviously used in this sense—

and also from that in which he compares a favourite whelp of Publius to the sparrow of Lesbia471. That a real and feathered sparrow was in the view of Catullus, is also evinced by the following ode, in which he laments the death of this favourite of his mistress. The erroneous notion taken up by Politian, has been happily enough ridiculed by Sannazzarius, in an epigram entitled Ad Pulicianum—

and Muretus expresses his astonishment, that the most grave and learned Benedictus Lampridius should have made this happy interpretation by Politian the theme of his constant conversation, “Hanc Politiani sententiam in omni sermone approbare solitum fuisse472.” Why Lesbia preferred a sparrow to other birds, I know not, unless it was for those qualities which induced the widow of the Emperor Sigismond to esteem it more than the turtle-dove473, and which so much excited the envy of the learned Scioppius, at Ingolstadt.

3. Luctus in morte Passeris. A lamentation for the death of the same sparrow—

The idea in this last line was probably taken from Bion’s [pg 277]celebrated Idyllium—the lamentation of Venus for the death of Adonis, where there is a similar complaint of the unrelenting Orcus—

This poem on the death of Lesbia’s sparrow has suggested many similar productions. Ovid’s elegy, In Mortem Psittaci474, where he extols and laments the favourite parrot of his mistress, Corinna, is a production of the same description; but it has not so much delicacy, lightness, and felicity of expression. It differs from it too, by directing the attention chiefly to the parrot, whereas Catullus fixes it more on the lady, who had been deprived of her favourite. Statius also has a poem on the death of a parrot, entitled Psittacus Melioris475; and Lotichius, a celebrated Latin poet, who flourished in Germany about the middle of the 16th century, has, in his elegies, a similar production on the death of a dolphin476. Naugerius, In Obitum Borgetti Catuli, nearly copies the poem of Catullus—

It has been imitated closely, and with application to a sparrow, by Corrozet, Durant, and Monnoye, French poets of the 16th century—by Gacon and Richer, in the beginning, and R. de Juvigny, in the end, of the 18th century. In all these imitations, the idea of a departure to regions of darkness, whence no one returns, is faithfully preserved. Most of them are written with much grace and elegance; and this, indeed, is a sort of poetry in which the French remarkably excel.

4. Dedicatio Phaseli. This is the consecration to Castor and Pollux, of the vessel which brought the poet safe from Bithynia to the shores of Italy. By a figure, daring even in verse, he represents the ship as extolling its high services, and claiming its well-earned dedication to Castor and Pollux, gods propitious to mariners. From this poem we may trace the progress of Catullus’s voyage: It would appear that he had embarked from Pontus, and having coasted Thrace, sailed through the Archipelago, and then into the Adriatic, whence the vessel had been brought probably up the course of the Po, and one of its branches, to the vicinity of Sirmio.

There have been nearly as many parodies of this poem, as [pg 278]imitations of that last mentioned. The collector of the Catalecta Virgilii, has attributed to Virgil a satire on Ventidius, (under the name of Sabinus,) who, from a muleteer, became consul, in the reign of Augustus, and which is parodied from Catullus—

Another parody is a Latin poem, entitled Lycoris, by Adrien Valois, published at the end of the Valesiana, where a courtezan, retired from the world, is introduced, boasting of the various intrigues of her former life. Nicol Heinelius published not less than fifty parodies of this poem, in a small book entitled “Phaselus Catulli, et ad eundem Parodiarum a diversis auctoribus scriptarum decades quinque; ex Bibliotheca Nic. Heinelii, Jurisconsulti, Lips. 1642.” Scaliger has also translated the Phaselus of Catullus into Greek iambics.

“The ungodly,” says the Wisdom of Solomon, “reason with themselves, but not aright. Our life is short—our time is a very shadow that passeth away—and, after our end, there is no returning. Come on, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present, and let us speedily use the creatures like as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let no flower of the spring pass by us; let us crown ourselves with rose-buds, before they be withered. Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness; let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place: For this is our portion, and our lot in this477.”

Among the Latin poets no specimen, perhaps, exists so perfect of this voluptuous yet pensive morality or immorality, as the Vivamus, mea Lesbia, of Catullus. It is a theme, too, in which he has been frequently followed, if not imitated, by succeeding poets—by Horace, in particular, who, amid all the delights of love and wine, seldom allows himself to forget the closing scene of existence. Many of them too, like Catullus, have employed the argument of the certainty and speediness of death for the promotion of love and pleasure—

And, in like manner, Propertius—

There is not much of this in the amatory or convivial poetry of the moderns. Waller has some traces of it; but a modern prose writer hath most beautifully, and with greater boldness than any of his predecessors, represented not merely the thoughts, but the actual image of mortality and decay, as exciting to a more full and rapid grasp at tangible enjoyments. Anastasius, while journeying amid the tombs of Scutari, breathing the damp deadly effluvia, and treading on a swelling soil, ready to burst with its festering contents, asks him[pg 280]self,—“Shall I, creature of clay like those here buried—I, who travel through life as I do on this road, with the remains of past generations strewed around me—I, who, whether my journey last a few hours, more or less, must still, like those here deposited, in a short time rejoin the silent tenants of a cluster of tombs—be stretched out by the side of some already sleeping corpse—and be left to rest, for the remainder of time, with all my hopes and fears, all my faculties and prospects, consigned to a cold couch of clammy earth—Shall I leave the rose to blush along my path unheeded—the purple grape to wither unculled over my head * * *? Far from my thoughts be such folly! Whatever tempts, let me take—whatever bears the name of enjoyment henceforth, let me, while I can, make my own479.”—The French writers, like Chaulieu and Gresset, who paint themselves as finding in philosophy and the Muses sufficient compensation for the dissatisfaction attending worldly pleasures, frequently urge the shortness of life, not as an argument for indulging in wantonness or wine, but for enjoying, to the utmost, the innocent delights of rural tranquillity—

The united sentiment of enjoying the delights of love, and beauties of nature, as suggested by the shortness of the period allotted for their possession, has been happily expressed by Mallet, in his celebrated song to the Scotch tune, The Birks of Invermay: