Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/55

Rh familiar as edge-tools to his earlier nature, when this same change of scene had brought him face to face with personal ill-health and with a beloved brother's death. We cannot exactly time this last event, which took place in the Troad; or it might seem as though, in the last passage quoted, our poet had been endowed with a spirit of prophecy. Certain it is that the premature loss of him—

wrought a distinct change of tone in the effusions of Catullus, thenceforth more directed towards the attraction of friendly sympathy than the youthful and hot-headed concoction of scurrilous and offensive lampoons. With a vaguely-ascertained chronology, it is not easy to prove this by examples; but it is consistent with a tender and affectionate nature that such a change should have supervened, though it cannot be maintained that there were no recurrences to the earlier and more pungent vein. One or two glimpses of Catullus as a master, and in his simpler and more domestic relations, will fitly end the present chapter, and give a meet conclusion to the Bithynian voyage. What pleasanter pride of ownership ever found its vent in song than our poet's dedication of his pinnace after it had done its work, and conveyed him home into the Lago di Garda?—