which has become guarded but prurient, and when all indecency is veiled in the terms of passion and sentiment. In this respect the difference between Catullus and Horace is as the difference between Fielding and Thackeray. 'I defy any one,' says Thackeray in that admirable chapter which treats of the later career of Mrs Rawdon Crawley, 'I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and inoffensive manner.' In describing this siren singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author with modest pride asks his readers all round, 'Has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No!' but the 'monster's hideous tail' appears very obviously in Tom Jones, and is still more perceptible in Catullus.

On the whole, it seems the safest way to conclude that language is to a very great extent a question of convention and fashion of the age, so that it becomes needless to wonder with Professor Sellar how 'a poet with the clear eye and pure taste of Catullus could turn his vigorous force of expression to the vilest uses,' and needless also to reject the story told by Suetonius of Julius Cæsar having invited the lampooner to dinner, as a sign of reconciliation after one of these scurrilous attacks. A general who at his own triumph could tolerate his soldiers singing 'Ecce Cæsar nunc triumphat qui subegit Galliam, Nicomedes non triumphat qui subegit Cæsarem,' or, 'Urbani, servate uxores, mœchum

calvum adducimus,' would probably feel no particular resentment against an ardent young poet, however vigorous his denunciation might have been, and he might well have considered it wise and statesmanlike to treat such attacks with contempt. I let my people say what they like, provided they let me do what I like,' is a saying attributed to Frederick the Great, and Cæsar was probably no less magnanimously tolerant of criticism. Indeed, an age when so correct a man as Cicero could make indecent jokes in the Senate, cannot have been very particular about forms of expression in lampoons, and we should probably not be far wide of the mark if we concluded that such attacks had upon Cæsar about as much effect as caricatures in comic journals have upon modern statesmen.

The extent to which personalities were carried, and the obscenity which nearly always accompanied them in ancient. times can hardly be realized at the present day, though indeed as late as the time of Voltaire such classical characteristics had not altogether disappeared from the literature of invective. Even Pompey, a man of notoriously good moral character, was assailed by the 'boni' of the day with epigrams quite as scurrilous as those which Catullus levelled at Cæsar, and the poet of the period probably knew that no one was likely then to take his epithets as conveying an historical fact. It was reserved for later historians to place on record the foulest accusations against Cæsar's moral character on the

authority of the soldiers' songs and Catullus' reckless diatribes, utterly ignoring the Fescennine-like character of these productions, which were indecent in their very nature, an indecency justified by custom and tradition. Indeed, in the case of the soldiers' songs, obscenity was justified by the theory that in order to avoid the influence of the 'fascinum' or evil eye, which was always ready to blast the good fortune of any tooblest mortal, some indecency in word or symbol was considered advisable, and hence probably arose the custom mentioned by Varro of carrying a "turpicula res" suspended round the neck, a custom which still exists among some of the castes in India.

As each age has its standard of correctness in language, so also has it its own peculiar notion of wit. To our minds such attacks as those made by Catullus on Cæsar appear simply repulsive, for their coarseness is not redeemed by anything approaching to wit or delicacy of sarcasm, which indeed can hardly co-exist with such plain-spoken obscenity. The poems in fact suggest that Swift might have placed his argument in favour of keeping up Christianity as productive of amusement on a somewhat broader basis. For that religion alone by prohibiting anything like a plain delineation of human passion has thereby given birth to all forms of humour, which can only exist when there is a background of infinite seriousness to give point to the sense of incongruity which any repressed outbreak of naturalism necessarily awakens in our minds.

This deficiency in humour Catullus of course shares with nearly all the writers of antiquity, so that the consequent plainness of his language need not make us draw absolutely unfavourable conclusions as to his intellectual versatility; but the reflection that humour is a growth of the ages and advanced civilization naturally occurs when we contemplate the species of composition which came home to the contemporaries of Catullus. In the story above mentioned as given by Suetonius, it is related that it was in consequence of an apology and retractation on the part of the poet that Cæsar invited him to dinner. This some writers appear to regard as throwing an air of improbability over the whole anecdote, not deeming it possible that a man of the rough republican honesty of Catullus would have condescended to retract anything he had written under the influence of sincere conviction.

But there is a trace of almost feminine vehemence in Catullus, the very reverse of unswerving and conscious power. The 'odi et amo is a very perceptible trait in his character, and is shown in the poems by the indignation with which he denounces men whom he had previously addressed in terms of affectionate admiration. Such weakly vehement natures are very susceptible of influence, and it may be easily imagined that the personal fascination which Cæsar exercised over most of his contemporaries may have affected the sympathetic character of the poet. Carmen xciii. seems to betray a consciousness of this influence in the poet himself.

A man does not openly proclaim his indifference to the good opinion of another unless he has some inward consciousness that the indifference is not a fact, and Catullus had himself described a somewhat similar phenomenon in the loudly - announced dislike which Lesbia testified towards him.

If the moral nature of Catullus is open to the charge of capricious wilfulness it is no less certain that his intellectual range is somewhat limited. He has none of the eager questioning of fate which Lucretius has put into majestic verse, no troublous thoughts of man and his destiny harass him with their inexplicable problems, no scorn and despair at the blind and helpless blundering of generation after generation through a vast and unintelligible universe, disturb his serene enjoyment of life or increase the misery of his moments of personal suffering. He is emphatically the poet of ardent passion, and that eager perception of beautiful things which accompanies enthusiastic youth. Though his conception of love is according to our modern ideas somewhat sensuous, though he has never portrayed the higher shades of the sentiment, the worship of intellectual beauty, like a Shelley or a Goethe, Catullus is far from being a poet whose sole force lies in his glorification of sensual indulgence. There is but one poem in praise of wine, and he seems to have been entirely unattracted by the topic of gastronomy, which inspired many of Horace's happiest efforts, and induced