Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/20

8 just named may be set beside the touching and pathetic poem to his brother as proofs of his exquisite command of very different veins, although in his hours of youthful gaiety he could throw off light lays on passing tittle-tattle, or chronicle adventures more or less scandalous and licentious. His claim to permanent honour as a poet rests upon the depths of intense feeling which, whether in light love (if his love for Lesbia can ever be so called) or in brotherly affection, as shown in his lament for his brother's death in the Troad, well up to the sound of the plaintive lyre. It is pretty fully settled that this brother's death did not synchronise with the poet's voyage to Bithynia. Had it been so, would he not surely, as Mr Theodore Martin has observed, have linked a fond memory of their joint boyhood with his ode on return to Sirmio? The times and seasons were distinct, but Catullus made a set pilgrimage to his brother's grave on the Rhætean headland; and to this landmark, as it were, of his life, this heartbreaking journey, and the desolation of the home to which he returned, must be referred his sad lines to Hortalus, Manlius, and Cornificius. If to this we add the late realisation of Lesbia's utter wantonry (a chapter in the poet's history which, as influencing it beyond all others, deserves to be treated separately and at length), it is made clear that his youthful spirits may by this time have been deserting the sensitive and saddened Catullus; and though there is no distinct record of his death, the inference is justifiable that accumulated bereavements and the rupture of tenderest ties, rather than the