Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/158

146 elegies, and in the less mythologic portions of these, where pathos, fervour, jealous passion supply the changing phases of his constant theme, it may be doubted if some of the more historic and Roman elegies of the fifth book do not supply as fine and memorable a sample of his Muse, which inherited from its native mountains what Dean Merivale designates "a strength and sometimes a grandeur of language which would have been highly relished in the sterner age of Lucretius." His life and morality were apparently on the same level as those of his own generation; but if a free liver, he has the refinement to draw a veil over much that Catullus or Ovid would have laid bare. And though his own attachment was less creditable than constant, that he could enter into and appreciate the beauty of wedded love, and of careful nurture on the elder Roman pattern, will be patent to those who read the lay of Arethusa to Lycotas, or peruse the touching elegy, which crowns the fifth and last of his books, of the dead Cornelia to Æmilius Paullus.