tion of the original can be conveyed. I have not attempted, except in the case of the Atys, to represent any of the poems in the metres of the original. Compared with the difficulty of such a task, the advantages that could be attained by doing so seemed to me to be exceedingly meagre. The genius of the English language is not suited to metrical versions of any kind, even 'hexameters and elegiacs have only an artificial beauty, and do not appeal to the ear with the harmony for which the same metres in Latin and Greek, and even in German, are distinguished. The charm of Hermann and Dorothea, and of the Roman and Venetian elegies, is far greater, from the rhythmical point of view, than that of Evangeline, or the occasional attempts of Clough, and this not so much owing to the superiority of Goethe's genius as to the fact that he had a more serviceable medium at his command. Even Tennyson in his attempts at hendecasyllabic versification has admitted as much, and when so great a master of rhythm has failed, or at all events not succeeded, who could hope to essay with confidence? With regard to the Atys the case is somewhat different. The undoubted success of the fine experiment of 'Boadicea,' and the impossibility of finding any metre in English which does not lose entirely the rush and vigour of the original, rendered it almost a duty to make an attempt from which I should otherwise have shrunk, and though I am painfully conscious of the inadequacy of my version, it may perhaps encourage some one

to make the same experiment with greater effect. I have throughout the poem adhered to the Tennysonian rather than to the Catullian form of galliambics, having a trochaic rhythm in the first half of the line, and the addition generally of an unaccented syllable at the close.

For facility of reference the ordinary arrangement has been followed, the fact of its being chronologically inaccurate seems hardly sufficient warrant for any alteration. The text to which I have usually had recourse is that of Doering, though Lachmann and Rossbach have also been laid under contribution. I must express my indebtedness to Professor R. Ellis's admirable Commentary and Text, a lifework which has entitled him to the warmest gratitude of all lovers of Catullus, and I have also derived much assistance from Schwabe's and Heyse's labours. I have also read with profit, M. Couat's sympathetic essay, especially on the influence exercised by Alexandrinism on the style of Catullus.

T. H.-D.

INTRODUCTION.

THERE is hardly one of the great writers of antiquity of whose life we possess any authentic contemporaneous record, and the brief and brilliant existence of Catullus offers no exception to the rule. that the Veronese poet did not become a name as vague and shadowy as Menander, Sappho, or Alcæus. One single manuscript of his works survived the devastation of the barbarian conquest, and was discovered in a mutilated state in the fourteenth century. It is curious to reflect how nearly a great genius had perished out of the world, and it is a striking proof of the barbarism which followed on the ruin of the Western

Indeed, it was by the merest accident

quoted as Catullus

should have been

Empire, that a poet so well known and had been by all the later Roman writers, virtually forgotten for nearly ten centuries. The only sources from which his individual history can be constructed are his poems, and a few meagre notices in the writings of Suetonius, Cicero, Pliny, and Appuleius. His prænomen is said by Appuleius to have been Caius, and by Pliny he is spoken of as Quintus, but it appears nearly certain that the former appellation is the correct one.

He was born, according to the Eusebian Chronicle, in 87 B.C., and died in 57 B.C. That the second of these dates is erroneous is clearly shown by the fact that in Carmen cxiii.

he speaks of Pompeius' second consulship, which did not take place till B.C. 55, and in Carmina xi. and xxix. he mentions Cæsar's invasion of Britain, which happened in B.C. 55-54. Also in Carmen liii. he refers to the speech of Licinius Calvus against Vatinius, which was delivered in opposition to Cicero's advocacy in B.C. 54. No political event of any date subsequent to this is mentioned in his poems, if we except the words in Carmen lii. 'Per consulatum pejerat Vatinius,' but it has been plausibly conjectured that this passage refers not to Vatinius' actual consulship, which took place in B.C. 47, but to the habit that worthy is said by Cicero to have had of swearing by his future consulship; an oath by no means a piece of simple bombast when a man had attained a rank which would naturally culminate in the highest honours. It is certain, at all events, that Catullus died young, as is shown by a passage in Ovid's Amores,

"Obvius huic venias hedera juvenilia cinctus

Tempora cum Calvo, docte Catulle tuo,"

for a man much over thirty was not usually regarded as 'juvenis.' It seems, then, probable on the whole either that Catullus died three years later than the date given by Jerome in the Eusebian Chronicle, and so was thirty-three at the time of his death, or if Jerome's statement that he died at the age of thirty must be accepted, the dates both of his birth and death must be put forward three years. Either view would agree with the assertion of Cornelius Nepos who

mentions him as a contemporary of Lucretius, who died or committed suicide in B.C. 50.

Catullus was born at Verona, of a good family, and his father was the friend and host of Julius Cæsar, which shows that he must have been a citizen of considerable local importance. The son, either sent there for his education or impelled possibly by the same strong passion for a larger sphere of life which drove Shakspere to London, took up his abode at Rome at an early age, and for the rest of his life always regarded Rome as his head-quarters. He did not indeed totally abandon Verona. His circle of acquaintance there seems to have been considerable, and he probably not unfrequently retired to his native place, for change of air, or to visit some of the Veronese beauties who appear to have captivated his fancy. But he always looked upon Rome as his home from the day when he first entered the city, no doubt with good introductions, a well-replenished purse, a handsome person and that indescribable fascination which early genius exercises on all with whom it comes in contact, and plunged into all the dissipation of the gay society of the day. He must emphatically have been a youth to whom was given

'So much of earth, so much of heaven,

And such imperious blood,'

and his own words bear out this impression.

'Multa satis

lusi' he says of himself when the white robe was first conferred upon him, and there is no reason to suppose that his