Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/181

Rh "Tarpeia," the "Ara Maxima" of Hercules, and the "Legend of Jupiter Feretrius," and the "Spolia Opima," as well as such stirring later ballads of the empire in embryo as the "Battle of Actium." It would seem that the poet was either disinclined for his task or dissatisfied with his success; for it is probable that most of those we have enumerated are but revised and retouched copies of earlier work, whilst the gems of the book, "Arethuse to Lycotas" and "Cornelia," are in another vein, of another stamp, and, as it seems to us, of a more mellow and perfect finish. That Propertius never approached the task of historic elegy with his whole heart, or even with the liveliness and versatility with which Ovid afterwards handled kindred topics in his 'Fasti,' peeps out from the abrupt cutting short of the "Early History of Rome" in the first elegy, and the supplement to it in a wholly different vein, where we are introduced to a Babylonian seer, and made acquainted with several data of the poet's personal history. The earlier portion has been ascribed to the period before his connection with Cynthia: the latter, which is not now to our purpose, belongs to his later revision-period. Perhaps it was the grandness of the programme that eventually convinced him of its intractability; yet none can regret that the poet did not burn the half-dozen proofs of what he might have achieved as a poetic annalist or legend-weaver. To take for example the first elegy—from the version of Mr Paley, who in these Roman elegies is always accurate and often not unpoetical—there is fancy and picturesqueness in the description