Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/99

Rh the great goddess's sake, has become a victim of his own frenzy. A Greek youth, leaving home and parents for Phrygia, vows himself to the service and grove of Cybele, and, after terrible initiation, snatches up the musical instruments of the guild, and incites his fellow-votaries to the fanatical orgies. Wildly traversing woodlands and mountains, he falls asleep with exhaustion at the temple of his mistress, and awakes, after a night's repose, to a sense of his rash deed and marred life. The complaint which ensues is unique in originality and pathos. "No other writer"—thus remarks Professor Sellar—"has presented so real an image of the frantic exultation and fierce self-sacrificing spirit of an inhuman fanaticism; and again, of the horror and sense of desolation which a natural man, and more especially a Greek or Roman, would feel in the midst of the wild and strange scenes described in the poem, and when restored to the consciousness of his voluntary bondage, and of the forfeiture of his country and parents and the free social life of former days." The same writer acutely notes the contrast betwixt "the false excitement and noisy tumult of the evening and the terrible reality and blank despair of the morning," which, with "the pictorial environments," are the characteristic effects of this poem. In the original, no doubt these effects are enhanced by the singular impetuosity of the metre, which, it is well known, Mr Tennyson, amongst others, has attempted to reproduce in his experiments upon classical metres. Such attempts can achieve only a fitful and limited success. English Galliambics can