Who, hanging on his mother’s breast,
To his known sire shall turn his eyes,
Outstretch his infant arms a while,
Half ope his little lips and smile.”
And thus by Leonard, in his pastoral romance of Alexis, where, however, he has omitted the semihiante labello, the finest feature in the picture:—
“Quel tableau! quand un jeune enfant,
Penché sur le sein de sa mère,
Avec un sourire innocent
Etendra ses mains vers son père.”
This nuptial hymn has been the model of many epithalamiums, particularly that of Jason and Creusa, sung by the chorus in Seneca’s Medea, and of Honorius and Maria, in Claudian. The modern Latin poets, particularly Justus Lipsius, have exercised themselves a great deal in this style of composition; and most of them with evident imitation of the work of Catullus. It has also been highly applauded by the commentators; and more than one critic has declared that it must have been written by the hands of Venus and the Graces—“Veneris et Gratiarum manibus scriptum esse.” I wish, however, they had excepted from their unqualified panegyrics the coarse imitation of the Fescennine poems, which leaves on our minds a stronger impression of the prevalence and extent of Roman vices, than any other passage in the Latin classics. Martial, and Catullus himself elsewhere, have branded their enemies; and Juvenal, in bursts of satiric indignation, has reproached his countrymen with the most shocking crimes. But here, in a complimentary poem to a patron and [pg 298]intimate friend, these are jocularly alluded to as the venial indulgences of his earliest youth.