Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/104

92 quits this uninviting vein for one of purer satire in every sense, the sting of it being of philological interest. Arrius, its subject, like some of our own countrymen, seems to have sought to atone for clipping his h's by an equally ill-judged principle of compensation. He used the aspirate where it was wrong as well as where it was right. The authors of a recent volume already alluded to—'Lays from Latin Lyres'—have so expressed the spirit and flavour of Catullus's six couplets on this Arrius, that their version may well stand for a sample of one of the most amusing and least offensive of his skits of this nature. It is, of course, something in the nature of a parody:—

And so we bid adieu to a poet who, with all his faults, has the highest claims upon us as a bard of nature and passion, and who was beyond question the first and greatest lyric poet of Italy.