Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/159



with Catullus and Tibullus, there would be scant remains of the poetry of Propertius—scant materials for a biography of him—if his loves and the story of them were swept out of the midst. With the poets of his school Love was the prime motive of song; and he was truly a sedulous example of his own profession:—

Yet it must be confessed that, however forcible and fervid the verse in which he commemorates this love, the results fail to impress us with the same reality and earnestness as his predecessors, partly perhaps because "he makes love by book," and ransacks the Greek poets and mythologists for meet comparisons with his mistress; and partly because occasionally his verses betray the fickleness of a man of pleasure and gallantry, whose expressions and protestations are to be taken only at their worth. Famous as the elegies