His works consist of numerous short fugitive pieces of a lyrical character; elegies, such as that already quoted; a secular hymn to Diana; a poem, somewhat of a dithyrambic character, entitled Atys; and the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, a mythological poem in heroic verse. His taste was evidently formed on a study of the Greek poets, from whom he learnt not only his beautiful hendecasyllables, but also their modes of thought and expression. He had skill and taste to adopt the materials with which his vast erudition furnished him, and to conceal his want of originality and inspiration. Some of his pieces are translations from the Greek, as, for example, the elegy on the hair of Berenice, which is taken from the Greek of Callimachus, and the celebrated ode of Sappho.[[505]] He was one of the most popular of the Roman poets—firstly, because he possessed those qualities which the literary society of Rome most highly valued, namely, polish and learning; and secondly, because, although he was an imitator, there is a living reality about all that he wrote—a truly Roman nationality. He did not merely disguise the inspiration of Greece in a Latin dress, but invested Roman life, and thoughts, and social habits with the ideal of Greek love and beauty. For these reasons his fame flourished as long as Rome possessed a classical literature. Two eminent men only have withheld their admiration—Horace in the golden age; Quintilian in the period of the decline. The former disparages him as a lyrical poet; the latter almost passes him over in silence. Horace was jealous of a rival who was so nearly equal to himself: he could not bear the remotest chance of his claim being disputed to be the musician of the Roman lyre;[[506]] and he dishonestly declared that he first adapted Æolian strains to the Roman lyre,[[507]] notwithstanding the Lesbian character and hendecasyllabic metres of his predecessor. Quintilian could not appreciate Catullus, because his own taste was too stiff and affected, and spoilt by the rhetorical spirit of his age.
Catullus had a talent for satire, but his satire was not inspired by a noble indignation at vice and wrong. It was the bitter resentment of a vindictive spirit: his love and his hate were both purely selfish. His language of love expresses the feelings of an impure voluptuary; his language of scorn those of a disappointed one. He gratified his irritable temper by attacking Cæsar most offensively; but the noble Roman would not crush the insect which annoyed him; and although Catullus insulted him personally by reading his lampoons in his presence, not a change passed over his countenance: he would not stoop to avenge himself: and the imperial clemency disarmed the anger of the libeller. The strong prejudice of Niebuhr in favour of Roman antiquity led him to pronounce Catullus a gigantic and extraordinary genius, equal in every respect to the lyric poets of Greece previously to the time of Sophocles; he believed him to be the greatest poet Rome ever possessed, except, perhaps, some few of the early ones; but that great man also thought that Virgil had mistaken his vocation in becoming an epic instead of a lyric poet.[[508]] Catullus certainly possessed great excellences and talents of the most alluring and captivating kind. No genius ever displayed itself under a greater variety of aspects. He has the playfulness and the petulance of a girl, the vivacity and simplicity of a child. He has never been surpassed in gracefulness, melody, and tenderness. No one, unless he possessed the coolness and self-command of a Cæsar, could have avoided wincing under the sharp attacks of his wit: he had passion and vehemence, but he had not the grandeur and sublimity either of Lucretius or Virgil.
Although the peculiar characteristics of his poetry are chiefly to be found in his lyric and elegiac poems, there are in his longer pieces, which are less known and less admired, passages of singular sweetness and beauty. He had not sufficient grasp and comprehensiveness of mind to conduct an epic poem. His knowledge of human nature, confined as it was to one of its phases—the development of the softer affections—did not admit of sufficient variety for so vast a work. His intellectual taste, like his moral principles, was too ill-regulated to construct a well-digested plan, necessary to the perfection of an epic poem; but wherever ingenuity and liveliness in description, or pathos in moving the affections, are required, the poetry of Catullus does not yield to that of Ovid or of Virgil.
The poem, entitled the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, bears some slight resemblance to an heroic poem. Its subject is heroic, for it imbodies a legend of the heroic age. The characters of mythology play a part in it, similar to that which they support in the poems of Homer or Virgil. But it is unconnected and deficient in unity; and the plan is far too extensive for the dimensions by which it is circumscribed. Nevertheless, with all these faults, it is pleasing on account of the luxuriance of its fancy and the brilliancy of its genius. The most beautiful passage, perhaps, is the episode relating the story of Theseus and Ariadne, which is introduced into the main body of the poem as being woven and embroidered on the hangings of the palace of Holeus. The following verses are taken from this episode,[[509]] and form part of the complaint of Ariadne for the perfidious desertion of Theseus:—
Siccine discedens, neglecto numine Divûm,
Immemor ah! devota domum perjuria portas?
Nullane res potuit crudelis flectere mentis
Consilium? tibi nulla fuit clementia præsto,
Immite ut nostri vellet mitescere pectus?
At non hæc quondam nobis promissa dedisti