Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/141

Rh not find Tibullus cultivating or even naming Augustus or his ministers, or the members of his literary coteries. How much or little Horace knew of him depends upon the genial Venusian's evidence in a single ode and a single epistle; and that evidence does not go for much. There is nothing to prove that his goodwill was warmly reciprocated; whilst Ovid, who was much junior to Tibullus, did not enjoy his personal friendship. There is, at all events, considerable negative evidence that our poet valued and cherished his independence; and good ground for believing that he maintained it. Whether there is enough to justify Dean Merivale's theory, "That he pined away in unavailing despondency in beholding the subjugation of his country," it would be hard to pronounce, in the face of his slightly unpatriotic and un-Roman deprecation of military service, his fondness for ease and rustication, and his undeniable life of somewhat Anacreontic self-pleasing; but on the other hand, there is ample ground for the idea, broached and shadowed forth by the same eminent historian, that Tibullus "alone of the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the glitter of the Cæsarian usurpation." Akin to this independence of principle is Tibullus's exceptional independence in literary style: whilst all his contemporaries were addicting themselves to Greek mythology and Alexandrine models, he stood alone in choice of themes and scenes best suited to his purely Italian genius. His terse,