From ceaseless sepultures, where each with Their languid limbs; already half-extinct,

each

Vied in the duteous labour, they return'd
Faint, sad, and weeping: and from grief alone
Oft to their beds resistless were they driven.
Nor liv'd the mortal then, who ne'er was tried
With death, with sickness, or severest woe.
Then the rude herdsman, shepherd, and the man
Of sturdiest strength, who drove the plough
a-field,

Horrid with fetor, stiff with blotches foul,
With rags obscene scarce cover'd; o'er the bones
Skin only, nought but skin; and drown'd alike
Within and outwards, with putrescent grume.

At length the temples of the gods themselves
Chang'd into charnels, and their sacred shrines
Throng'd with the dead: for Superstition now,
And power of altars, half their sway had lost,
Whelm'd in the pressure of the present woe.

Nor longer now the costly rites prevail'd
Of ancient burial, erst punctilious kept;
For all roved restless, with distracted mind,
From scene to scene; and, worn with grief and
toil,

Languish'd remote; and in their wretched cots
Sunk, the sad victims of disease and want:
O'er breathless sires their breathless offspring lay,
Or sires and mothers o'er the race they bore.
Nor small the misery through the city oft
That pour'd from distant hamlets; for in throngs Gave to their friends the interment chance al-

THIS elegant poet was born, of a respectable family, in or near Verona; but went early to Rome, on the invitation and, probably, under the patronage, of Manlius Torquatus. He afterwards visited Bithynia in company with Caius Memmius, the Prætor of that province, and the friend to whom Lucretius had inscribed his poem on The Nature of Things; but having quarrelled with his new patron, and feeling dejected at the loss of a beloved brother, who had died on the expedition, he returned to Italy, and, from that period until his decease, continued to divide his time between the dissipations of the capital and the solitudes of his beloved Sirmio.* In the

latter a vault is still pointed out to the traveller, as having been the grotto of Catullus.

Catullus was a man of pleasure, or, in plainer English, an idler and debauchee. By his genius and accomplishments he had early won his way into the great world, and lived on terms of intimacy not only with many of the most dissipated, but with some also of the most distinguished literary and political, characters of the day. Amongst the latter may be enumerated Cornelius Nepos, Cicero, Asinius Pollio, and even Julius

was attended by the officers of the French army and many of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood,—particularly the dramatic poet Anelli, who joined with his host in singing and reciting verses in honour of the place and of its ancient owner. Amongst the toasts, on the occasion, were-"The memory of Catullus, the most elegant of Latin poets."-" Buonaparte, who honours great men amidst the tumult of arms-who celebrated Virgil at Mantua, and paid homage to Catullus, by visiting the

Sirmio, the site of Catullus' favourite villa, is a peninsular promontory, projecting into the Benacus, (now Lago de Garda)-a lake celebrated by Virgil, as well as by subsequent poets, one of whom, Fracastoro, who dwelt in the vicinity, while lamenting the untimely death of the poet Flaminius, represents the shade of Catullus as still nightly wandering amidst the scenes he loved.-peninsula of Sirmio."-" General Miollis, the protector "Te ripe flevêre Athesis; te voce vocare Auditæ per noctem umbræ manesque Catulli, Et patrios mulcere nová dulcedine lucos." Vestiges of the house, supposed to have belonged to Catullus, are yet shown on this peninsula, and were visited by Buonaparte in 1797. Two years afterwards, General St. Michel gave a brilliant féte there, which

of the sciences, and the fine arts, in Italy."-The enthusiasm of the party was so great, that, some inhabitants of the neighbourhood, happening luckily for themselves to arrive at that moment, with a petition for the removal of the troops then quartered on them, at once obtained their request.-See Heni. Jour. Historique des Operat. du Siege de Peschiera, and Dunlop's Roman Literature, &c.

Cæsar, notwithstanding his satires on that illus- | shameless woman,-who could weep for a spartrious general, whose only revenge, according to row, but poison her husband! Suetonius, was to invite his satirist to supper. The period of his death has not been posiHis favourite mistress, whom he immortalises, tively ascertained, but occurred most probably in such exquisite verses, under the name of Les- somewhere between the years 58 and 48 B. C., bia, is supposed to have been Clodia, the daugh- and at the early age of thirty or forty.-See Clinter or wife of Q. Metellus Celer, a beautiful button's Fasti Hellenici, Vol. II. p. 185.

ON THE DEATH OF LESBIA'S SPARROW.

MOURN, all ye Loves and Graces! mourn,
Ye wits, ye gallants, and ye gay!
Death from my fair her bird has torn,

Her much-lov'd sparrow's snatch'd away.

Her very eyes she priz'd not so,

For he was fond and knew my fair
Well as young girls their mothers know,
And sought her breast and nestled there.
Once fluttering round, from place to place,
He gaily chirp'd to her alone;
But now that gloomy path must trace,
Whence Fate permits return to none.
Accursed Shades, o'er hell that lower,

Oh, be my curses on you heard!
Ye, that all pretty things devour.

Have torn from me my pretty bird.
Oh evil deed! Oh sparrow dead!

Oh what a wretch, if thou canst see
My fair-one's eyes with weeping red,
And know how much she grieves for thee!

UPON MAMURRA.*

ADDRESSED TO CESAR.

WHO can behold, or who endure,

Save rakes devoid of truth and shame,
Or gambling cheats, or gluttons tame,
That base Mamurra should procure

And squander free the spoil and products all
Of farthest Britain's isle, and rich Transalpine
Gaul.

Miscreant Romulus! canst thou see

And suffer this?-Then thine the shame,
The rake's, the cheat's, the glutton's name.
Some proud and all-abounding he
Through all our marriage beds shall rove
Gay as Adonis, soft as Venus' dove.

Canst thou still see and bear this thing,

Miscreant Romulus?-Thine the shame,
The rake's, the cheat's, the glutton's name.
And for this name, unrivall'd king,
Proud didst thou bear afar thy conquering crest
E'en to the farthest isle that gems the distant
west.t

A profligate Roman knight, who, by the favour of Cæsar, amassed an immense fortune in the Gallic wars. This probably is the poem which (according to Suetonius) was read to Cæsar, while on a visit at Cicero's villa, and "at which," says the latter in a letter to Atticus, he never changed countenance."

† Britain.

That he, thy lustful friend, should prey
On all the spoil, thy valour's prize!
"What matters it?" thy bounty cries,
"A little wealth he throws away."
And has he then but little wealth devour'd?
First he his father's hoards on low companions
shower'd;

Then by the spoil of Pontus fed,
And then by all Iberia gave,

And Tagus from its golden wave.
Him justly Gaul and Britain dread;
Justly his grasping sway may cause alarms,
More than his emperor's name and all-victorious

arms.

Oh! why so base a favourite choose,

Who has not wit, nor use, nor power,

Save all thy riches to devour ?
Didst thou, Oh son-in-law! then lose,
Didst thou, Oh conquering father! then obtain,
The empire of the world to be this minion's
gain.

TO LESBIA.

LET us, my Lesbia, live and love,
And, though sour Cynics disapprove,
Heed not their frowns a stiver;
Suns set, and suns again may rise,
But we, when once our daylight dies,

Must sleep, sleep on, for ever.
Give me then a thousand kisses,
Then a hundred of like blisses,
Hundreds then to thousands add,
And, when thousands more we've had,
We'll blend, confuse them all, that so
Nor you nor I their sum may know,—
No; nor even Envy's self e'er guess
Our half amount of happiness.

A MESSAGE TO HIS MISTRESS.
COMRADES and friends! with whom, where'er
The Fates had will'd, through life I rov'd,
Now speed ye home, and with you bear
These bitter words to her I've lov'd.
Tell her from fool to fool to run,
Where'er her vain caprice may call;
Of all her dupes not loving one,

But ruining and maddening all.
Bid her forget-what now is past-
Our once dear love, whose ruin lies
Like a fair flower, the meadow's last,
Which feels the plougshare's edge and dies.
* Pompey, who married Cæsar's daughter, Julia.

Arduous the palm of strife: Oh! friends be They, with thy dower, have yielded every right: