TRANSLATION FROM CATULLUS.

Suffenus, whom we both have known so well,

No other man in manners can excel;

Facetious, courteous, affable, urbane.

The world’s approval he is sure to gain.

But, would you think it? he has now essayed

To be a bard, and countless verses made;

Perhaps ten thousand, perhaps ten times more,

For none but he could ever count them o’er;

Not scribbled down on scraps, as one does when

In careless rhymes we only try our pen,

But in a gilt-edged book, all richly bound,

The writing ornate with a care profound,

Rich silken cords to mark each favorite part,

The cover, ev’n, a monument of art.

Yet as you read, Suffenus, who till then

Seemed the most pleasant of all gentlemen,

Becomes offensive as the country boor,

Who milks rank goats beside his cottage door,

Or digs foul ditches: such a change is wrought

By rhymes with neither sense nor music fraught.

So crazed is he with this same wretched rhyme,

That never does he know so blest a time

As when he writes away, and fondly deems

He rivals Homer’s god-enraptured dreams;

And wonders in his pride, himself to see,

The very pattern-pink of poesy.

Alas! Suffenus, while I laugh at thee,

The world, for aught I know, may laugh at me.

It is the madness of each one to pride

Himself on that ’twere better far to hide;

Nor know the faults in that peculiar sack

Which Æsop says is hanging at his back.