ON QUINTIA AND LESBIA: THE COMPARISON (Ep. 86).
Translated by Elton.

Quintia is beauteous in the million's eye;
Yes, beauteous in particulars, I own:

Fair-skinn'd, straight-shaped, tall-sized: yet I deny
A beauteous whole of charmingness there's none:
In all that height of figure there is not

A seasoning spice of that-I know not what;
That piquant something, grace without a name;
But Lesbia's air is charming as her frame;
Yes-Lesbia, beauteous in one graceful whole,
From all her sex their single graces stole.

Shakespeare, in "The Tempest," makes Ferdinand compare the perfect beauty of Miranda with other women, whose beauty was in one respect or another defective (Act III. sc. 1):

For several virtues

Have I lik'd several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow'd,
And put it to the foil: but you, O you,

So perfect, and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best.

The prominent idea of the epigram, that beauty without grace"that piquant something"-cannot give entire satisfaction, is well expressed by Capito, a Greek epigrammatist. The translation is by Fawkes (Jacobs II. 183):

Beauty, without the graces, may impart

Charms that will please, not captivate, the heart;
As splendid baits without the bearded hook
Invite, not catch, the tenants of the brook.

TO CALVUS, ON THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE QUINTILIA (Ep. 96).

Translated by Elton.

If ere in human grief there breathe a spell

To charm the silent tomb, and soothe the dead;
When soft regrets on past affections dwell,

And o'er fond friendships lost, our tears are shed;

Sure, a less pang must touch Quintilia's shade,
While hov'ring o'er her sad, untimely bier,
Than keen-felt joy that spirit pure pervade,
To witness that her Calvus held her dear.

So, Shakespeare in his 30th Sonnet:

When to the sessions of sweet, silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expence of many a vanish'd sight.

It appears that Calvus showed his love for Quintilia by writing a monody to her memory, which has not been preserved. Propertius alludes to it:

The soft expression Calvus' page betrays,

Who mourn'd Quintilia's death in pitying lays.

In Notes and Queries," 1st S. V. 361, a translation of a Latin epitaph is given, inscribed on the monument of a husband by a truly mourning wife. It is in the church of S. Giles, Cripplegate, to the memory of William Staples, citizen of London, who died in 1650 :

That heaven's thy home, I grieve not, soul most dear;
I grieve but for myself, the lingerer here.

DIRGE AT HIS BROTHER'S TOMB (Ep. 101).
Translated by Elton.

Slow faring on, o'er many a land and sea,
Brother! I come to thy sad obsequy:
The last fond tribute to the dead impart,
And call thee, speechless ashes as thou art,
Alas! in vain! since fate has ravish'd thee,
E'en thee, thyself, poor brother! torn from me
By too severe a blow; let this be paid,
This right of ancestry, to soothe thy shade;
Let this, all bathed in tears, my friendship tell,
And oh! for ever! bless thee, and farewell!

This beautiful dirge, so pathetic and so grand, is alone sufficient to stamp Catullus as a true poet; and it is painful to remember that he

who could pen such lines over the grave of a brother, disgraced his muse by those scurrilous invectives against Cæsar, and that licentious description of vice, which render the majority of his epigrams either worthless or abominable.

Martial has an epigram on fraternal love, which is far above his ordinary level (Book I. 37). The translation is by Hay. It is addressed to Lucanus and Tullus :

Fraternal love in such strong currents runs,
That were your fate like that of Leda's sons,
This were the single, but the generous, strife,
Which for the other first should yield his life;
He first would cry, who first should breath resign,
Live thou, dear brother, both thy days and mine.

TIBULLUS.

Flourished B.C. 28. He is supposed to have been born in Rome, or its neighbourhood, and was the intimate friend of Horace and other poets of his time.

The following pieces are from the fourth Book of Tibullus, part of which is by some supposed to have been written by Sulpicia, the wife of Calenus, who flourished in the age of Domitian; all the poems, however, are found in the MSS. of Tibullus, and the greater part bear traces of being his production.

SULPICIA'S BIRTHDAY (Book IV. 2).
Translated by Whaley.

Great Mars, see Delia bowing at thy shrine;
To gaze on her, leave, leave thy seats divine;
Not Venus' self can blame thee, yet beware,
Lest, as you gaze, you drop the threatening spear,
.And the soft maid subdue the god of war.
In her bright eye Love lights his double fire,
When he would fill immortals with desire.
Whate'er she does, where'er her feet she turns,
Grace lurks beneath her steps, and every act adorns.
How graceful flows her loose, dishevell'd hair!
Nor less the twisted locks become the fair.
She fires if purple vestments round her flow,
She fires in garments emulating snow.

Thus decks Vertumnus the celestial hall,

Grac'd with a thousand robes, and adding grace to all.

Horace Walpole, at the request of Spence (the friend of Pope), translated the couplet on Sulpicia's grace :

If she but moves or looks, her step, her face
By stealth adopt unmeditated grace.

Several other translations of these celebrated lines, besides Walpole's, are given in Spence's Anecdotes, 1820, 439. One by S. D. is very happy. A writer in "Notes and Queries" (4th S. II. 452) suggests that the initials are those of Stephen Duck :

In ev'ry motion, action, look, and air,

A secret grace attends and forms the Fair.

Tibullus is probably the original whence Milton drew his description of Eve ("Paradise Lost," Book VIII. 488):

Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,

In every gesture dignity and love.

Walpole, in his letter to Spence with the translation given above, says: "Was not Milton's paraphrase even an improvement on the original? It takes the thought, gives it a noble simplicity, and don't screw it up into so much prettiness."

SULPICIA TO CERINTHUS (Book IV. 11).

Translated by George, Lord Lyttelton.

Say, my Cerinthus, does thy tender breast
Feel the same feverish heats that mine molest?
Alas! I only wish for health again,

Because I think my lover shares my pain:
For what would health avail to wretched me,
If you could, unconcern'd, my illness see?

The following pretty lines by Cartwright, a poet of the 17th century, entitled "Absence," give expression, in the same manner, to a maiden's care for life only for her lover's sake:

Fly, O fly, sad sigh! and bear
These few words into his ear;
"Blest where'er thou dost remain,
Worthier of a softer chain,

Still I live, if it be true

The turtle lives that's cleft in two:
Tears and sorrows I have store,
But, O! thine do grieve me more!
Die I would, but that I do

Fear my fate would kill thee too."

RUMOUR (Book IV. 14).

Translated by Grainger (altered).

My Love, says Rumour, courts another swain;
Would I were deaf when Rumour tells the tale!
All crimes to her imputed give me pain;

Why rack me thus? Harsh Rumour, cease to rail!

Tibullus is more generous than Propertius, who, in one of his Elegies to Cynthia, tells her (Book II. El. 20):

Beware-for I shall trust each tale of thee;

Rumour has wings, and flies o'er earth and sea. Shakespeare, in the prologue to the Second Part of "Henry IV." makes Rumour say:

Upon my tongue continual slanders ride;
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.

PROPERTIUS.

Born at Mevania, in Umbria. His father was of equestrian rank, but his property was confiscated on account of his support of Antony. He went to Rome when young, and gave himself up to poetry. His ambition was to be considered the Roman Callimachus. The date at which he flourished is placed at B.C. 24.

THE MURDERED SOLDIER (Book I. 21).

Translated by Nott.
Gallus loquitur.

Thou! who the battle's common fate hast fled,
Hast by a wound from Tuscan ramparts bled;
Why for my loss roll thy swoll'n eyes in tears?
Because I late partook thy martial cares :