"Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago—" so Tennyson in one of his own beautiful lyrics addresses Catullus; and it is this unsurpassed tenderness that more than all his other admirable qualities, than his consummate technical skill, than his white heat of passion, than his "clearness as of the terrible crystal," brings him and keeps him near our hearts.
That wonderful Ciceronian age has left its mark as few ages have, deep upon human history. The conquests and legislation of Julius Cæsar determined the future of Europe and laid the foundation of the modern world. The prose invented by Cicero became and still remains the common language of civilized mankind. Among the poems of Catullus are verses addressed to both of these men; but his own young ivy-crowned brows shine out of the darkness and the distance, with no less pure a radiance and no less imperishable a fame.
Note.—In Mr. Mackail's closing phrase the lover of Ovid will note an echo from that poet's famous elegy suggested by the premature death of still another Roman singer, Tibullus. Among the kindred spirits—says Ovid—who will welcome the new-comer to the Elysian fields,—
"Thou, O learned Catullus, thy young brows ivy-encircled,
Bringing thy Calvus with thee, wilt to receive him appear."
Ed.