Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/140

128 with gifts, designated strenæ, the étrennes of New Year's Day in Paris. The first elegy of the third book draws a lively picture of the stir and bustle of a day not unlike St Valentine's morning in its latest development; and the second in the fourth book, an elegant and erotic performance, commends Sulpicia's beauty as she appears dressed for this festival. Neither, however, has the detail and the descriptiveness of Tibullus's pictures of the rural feasts. Both may well have emanated from one of Messala's set of protégés; but any one imbued with the tone and spirit of his genuine elegies will hesitate to admit these into that category. But this same scrupulousness and exactness to which we have referred, besides attesting the religious spirit, according to the light that was in him, of Albius Tibullus, extended itself to his civil status and conduct, in relation to the powers that then were. Not improbably he was at heart an old-fashioned waif and stray of the republic, for whom it was enough to be admitted to the literary circle of that virtuous representative of the old Roman nobles, Messala; and who, while acquiescing in the imperial rule from inability, and probably disinclination, to take a prominent or active part in politics or social matters, made a point of maintaining his independence, by keeping aloof from the cohort of the bards of the empire. Though Ovid can elegise his tuneful predecessor in strains which were no more than justly due to one to whom his own poetry owed not a little, and imagine him in death associated with Catullus, Calvus, Gallus, and other poets, we do