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Italy in 1472. From these lines, some of which are hardly intelligible, we learn that Catullus had long been unknown in his native country, and that to the recovery of his verses he was indebted to a compatriot:

"Ad patrem venio longis de finibus exul, Causa mei reditus compatriola fuit."

And he goes on to state that the MS. had been transcribed by a Frenchman. We have somewhere seen an anecdote to the effect that the only MS. of Catullus remaining in the world was found in a French castle, where it had been applied to the use of propping up a cask of wine, whose droppings had erased, heaven knows how many epigrams, odes, and love-songs to Lesbia. Both Guarinus and his son took much pains in correcting the poems, of which they brought out a Veronese edition, together with Tibullus and Propertius in 1472. The oldest Venetian edition, according to Bayle, appeared in 1488, with a commentary by Anthony Parthenius. The first annotated edition was that of Grævius, printed at Leyden in 1680. Many others followed.

Catullus dedicates his sprightly little book to his Veronese townsman, the historian, Cornelius Nepos :"DEDICATION.

"On whom shall I bestow this little book Of latest careless fancies, trimly dight, Corded and ribboned gay, and polished bright

With the smooth pumice? Round

about I look

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The virgin patroness here alluded to is Minerva, though from the tenor of his verses generally, Catullus would have more appropriately appealed to the Aphroditean goddess to become the divine conservator of the works of his genius, than that of Wisdom, the stern glaucopis Athene. In the lines to a vain scribbler, Varius (Carmina xxii.), Catullus describes a dandy MS. of his friend thus:

"Nec (perscripta) ut fit in palimpesto, Relata: chartæ regiæ, novi libri Dorecta plumbo, et pumice omnia æquata.” Novi umbilici, lora rubra membrana,

Pumice was used for polishing the skin as well as books. The finest sort came from the islands of Melos and Nisyros. Cornelius Nepos alludes to Catullus, in speaking of the poems of L. Junius Calidius:-“L. Junium Calidium quem post Lucretio, calultique mortem, multo eligentissimum poetam nostram tulisse statem vere videor post contendere expedivit."

The natural negligent graces which Gresset, in his epistle to his muse, finds in Anacreon:—

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O! couldst thou of a summer noon,
When love and fancy flag awhile,
But make me like my Lesbia smile
In play with thee till rise of moon.
Such grateful pleasure were mine own,
As filled the girl whose lover past
Victorious, while behind he cast
The golden fruit that loosed her zone."*

III.

ON THE DEATH OF LESBIA'S SPARROW.
"Weep, little loves-weep, tender souls,
As many as have tears to shed:
My girl's sad heart with sorrow tolls,
For ah! her sparrow sweet, whose bed
Was in her breast, is dead-is dead!
More than her eyes of liquid gray,
She loved it, loved it night and day;
Nor was it strange, for in its dell

It nestled, careless of all other,
Delicious pet! and knew her well,
As little maid her loving mother;
And by her side in plumage rare
Hopt, chirping, peeping everywhere:
Alas! now lost unto her eyes,
Adown the shadow-path it flies,
Whence none again may reach the
skies.

May curses fall in angered breath
Upon ye, cruel shades of death!
Ye hunger for all beauteous forms,
Ye waft our sparrow on your storms.
Oh wretched fate! Oh hapless sparrow!

Thy loss must fill one room with woe
And redden lids of sweetest snow
For many and many a sad to-morrow."

Some of the most beautiful nuga canora have been written on birds. Catullus's ode to Lesbia's sparrow, and that on its death, and Anacreon's "Pigeon," as illustrative of antique, may be contrasted with Shelley's ode to the skylark, and Keats' ode to the nightingale, as a product of modern imagination. Nothing can be simpler than the two former, or richer than the latter. Literally rendered, Anacreon's "Pigeon" runs as follows:

“Traveller.

"Oh, beauteous little pigeon,
Say whither art thou flying?
And whence hast gained the perfume
That from thy wings diffusing,
Tincturest the air thou breathest?
Who art thou, say, and further
What message art thou bearing?"
"Pigeon.

"Anacreon has sent me

To shining-haired Bathyllus,
Who now enchants his fancy
Beyond all other lovers.
From Venus he has bought me
For one sweet little lyric,
And now Anacreon's errands
I execute with swiftness,
And carry singing letters
To one maid and another
So well, that pleased, he tells me
I soon shall win my freedom.
But even should he dismiss me
I still would live beside him,
Ministering to his wishes.
Now o'er the mountains flying,
Now settling on a tree-top,
Wearied, or any wild thing.
With him I feast each evening,
Pecking his bread, and drinking
Out of his own sweet wine-cup;
And o'er my master flutter,
Ere on his gold lyre perched
I softly sink in slumber.

Thou knowest all; dismiss me,
Man, now that thou hast made me
More prattling than a raven."

This little antique gossipping song, between Traveller and Pigeon, recalls the following short but pathetic little dialogue, by an old French poet, between a bereaved turtle-dove and

a traveller :

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* Atalanta, daughter of the King of Corinth, and the swiftest runner of her time. Several youths sought her in marriage, and her father, to arrange their separate claims without offending any, offered her to whichever of them was able to surpass her in a race. She overcame them all until Theseus entered the lists. At starting he threw a golden apple at her feet, which she stopped to pick up; and, as she approached him, another, and another, with the same result, until at length he passed the goal, winning thus at the same time his race and his wife. The apple has played a more important part in the history of the world than even the grape itself: that of Eve caused the fall of man; that of Paris raised division among the gods; from the fall of an apple the calculating imagination of Newton discovered the essential law by which the universes of infinity are sustained and regulated.

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XXV. THE ASSIZE SERMON,

THE sermon given in the last chapter contains what is clearly a local portrait; and, there can be no question, must be pointed at a certain legal functionary of the Cathedral-Doctor Topham by name-who was then embroiling the ecclesiastical society of the place in his disputes. Later on it will be shown how he and Mr. Sterne came into collision-and that favourite practice of his, of providing niches for all his friends and enemies, in his comic galleries, quite warrant us in believing that this sketch is taken from life. There is a vitality, too, about it, which could not have come from the imagination. A copy from a photograph always betrays itself. "A third," runs this description "Is crafty and designing in his nature. View his whole life 'tis nothing but a cunning contexture of dark acts and unequitable subterfuges, basely to defeat all laws, plain dealing and the safe enjoyment of our several properties. You will see such a one working out a frame of little designs upon the ignorance and perplexities of the poor and needy man-shall raise a fortune upon the inexperience of a youth, or the unsuspecting temper of his friend, who would have trusted him with his life." Doctor Slop is made to call

The

attention to this disagreeable portrait in a very significant way :character of this last man is more detestable than all the rest, and seems to have been taken from some pettifogging lawyer amongst you."

In these times, a mere silent and tranquil loyalty was almost suspicious; therefore, in the presence of Mr. Baron Clive and his learned brother, Mr. Sterne was obliged to make an obstreperous profession of faith. Hence his sermon is disfigured by a clumsy and awkward tirade against "Popery," singularly out of place in that venerable edifice. His conclusion is very quaint and happy, and pitched in the true antique key. We are to deduce from his argument, that "whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason but his passions which have got the better of his CREED. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbours; were they separate, depend upon it, 'tis for no other cause but quietness' sake."

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The common, hackneyed phrase, about one's actions "going against one's conscience," means exactly the same as when he tells you such a thing goes against his stomach-a present want of appetite being gene rally the true cause of both." Finally, he descends from the pulpit with an

Romans. There a Jewish trader, arrived in Prusa to make interest with the Roman Proconsul, bows to the ground as they proceed. From yonder dusky window, embraced by the arm of the Syrian vine, heavy with grapes, a girl utters some laughing sentence, and shakes her scarlet slipper at them as they pass. At the fountain outside the amphitheatre, the gladiators are washing their wounds, their white flesh stripped, with blood glittering in the fierce sunlight. Hark! from within to the roar of the lion, mingled with the tumultuous applause of the spectators. Or, hark again! turning to yon myrtle-shadowed passage leading to the sea-'tis a group of Greek maidens singing a song of Sappho, the central figure crowned with amaranth blossoms, leading the harmony, as she touches, with white fingers, her small, red, triangular lyre. Below, on the edge of the green shore, a faint pillar of smoke rises-a band of Ægean mariners are offering a sacrifice to the sea ere they embark; brightly the pine-wood burns, but brighter now, as one of them throws a vase of frankincense on the flame.

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WE may here introduce the "Atys," a dithyrambic song of the priests of Cybele-a poem which Catullus either translated from the Greek, or which, as its original vigour seems to indicate, he composed after hearing the legend sung by the votaries of the deity, in some of the Bithynian temples. Phrygia supposed to have been the original seat of the worship of Cybele, as the name of its priests, Galli- -so called from a river in that country-testify; but it subsequently spread through Thrace, Egypt, Greece, and even in Rome. Cybelean shrines abounded in the neighbourhood of all the cities of Asia-Minor, in which Pessinus, on Mount Dyndmus, was the chief seat. They were chiefly erected in dense groves and forests huge structures of rude Cyclopean architecture, circular in form (like the Druid cirque), while in the midst of each rose the colossal figure of the Mater Deorum, in black marble-her turreted crown emblemizing the cities of the earth. The worship of the deity, which is possibly one of the earliest forms of Asian paganism, was

intended to illustrate the rites of agriculture, of which it may be called the religion. Nothing could be more sombre, strange, and uncouth than its orgiastic ceremonial. Around the altar in each temple, on which the pine-wood pyre blazed furiously, lay a lion, tame and unchained, to indicate that the most savage creatures of the earth can be subjugated by human power, the Cybelean priests and priestesses, the wild Galle and Corybantes, respectively dressed in skins like shepherds and shepherdesses, and armed with bucklers and spears, executed frantic dances, under the influence of intoxicating potionsfuriously clashing their timbrels, uttering piercing cries, and trampling upon and rolling over each other on the ground-thus representing, in pantomime, the upturning of the earth by the plough, and the clash of agricultural implements. The "Atys" of Catullus is the only poem of antiquity (of which Gibbon considered it the most valuable relic) in which any of the legends connected with the worship of Cybele has been preserved; and the Galliambic metre in which it is written, well represents, in the hurried, impetuous beat of its rhythmus, the spirit and movement of the votaries of Cybele, while performing their orgiastic rites. As Galliambic form is very difficult to sustain in English, metrically at least, if not in spirit:

"Super alta vectus Atys, celeri rate maria, Phrygium nemus citato cupide pede tetigit,

Adiit que opaca sedens redimita loca deæ."

"Over the great, gray ocean, Atys in his wet bark swiftly wafted,

With footstep ardent, treading by the
wild shore, fired with moving,
Hears the shadowy sound umbrageous of
Cybele's awesome mansion," &c.

We have preferred to render it in English hexameter. Aristotle states that double words are best suited to dithyrambic poetry-a rule Catullus has several times followed, in the "Atys," for instance :

"Ubi cerva silvicultrix, ubi aper nemorivagus."

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THE ATYS OF CATULLUS.

"Young Atys, borne within his rapid barque Along the vasty seas, has touched at length

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