[545] 'And now, shaking his head, the aged peasant laments, with a sigh, that the toil of his hands has often come to naught; and, as he compares the present with the past time, he extols the fortune of his father, and harps on this theme, how the good old race, full of piety, bore the burden of their life very easily within narrow bounds, when the portion of land for each man was far less than now.'—ii. 1164-70.
[546] ii. 569-70.
CHAPTER XV.
CATULLUS.
Lucretius and Catullus were regarded by their contemporaries as the greatest poets of the last age of the Republic[547]. They alone represent the poetry of that time to the modern world. Although born into the same social rank, and acted upon by the dissolving influences, the intellectual stimulus, and the political agitation of the same time, no poets could be named of a more distinct type of genius and character. The first has left behind him only the record of his impersonal contemplation. His life was passed more in communion with Nature than in contact with the world: his experiences of happiness or sorrow entered into his art solely as affording materials for his abstract thought. The second has stamped upon his pages the lasting impression of the deepest joy and pain of his life, as well as of the lightest cares and fancies that occupied the passing hour. Intensely social in his temper and tastes, he lived habitually the life of the great city and the provincial town, observing and sharing in all their pleasures, distractions, and animosities, and only escaping, from time to time, for a brief interval to his country houses on the Lago di Garda and in the neighbourhood of Tivoli. He seems to have had no other aim in life than that of passionately enjoying his youth in the pleasures of love, in friendly intercourse with men of his own rank and age, in the practice of his art, and the study of the older poets, by whom that art was nourished. All his poems, with the exception of three or four works of creative fancy and one or two translations, have for their subject some personal incident, feeling, or character. Nearly all have some immediate relation to himself, and give expression to his love or hatred, his admiration or scorn, his happiness or misery. There is nearly as little in them of reflection on human life as of meditative communion with Nature; but, as individual men and women excited in him intense affection or passion, so certain beautiful places and beautiful objects in Nature charmed his fancy and sank into his heart. He shows himself, spiritually and intellectually, the child of his age in his ardent vitality, in the license of his life and satire, in the fierceness of his antipathies; and also in his eager reception of the spirit of Greek art, his delight in the poets of Greece and the tales of the Greek mythology, in his striving after form and grace in composition, and in the enthusiasm with which he anticipates the joy of travelling among 'the famous cities of Asia.' In all our thoughts of him he is present to our imagination as the 'young Catullus'—
hedera iuvenalia vinctus
Tempora.
More than any great ancient, and than any great modern poet, with the exception, perhaps, of Keats, he affords the measure of what youth can do, and what it fails to do, in poetry. Although the exact age at which he died is disputed, yet the evidence of his poems shows that he did not outlive the boyish heart, the frank trusting simplicity, the ardent feelings and passions, the careless unreflecting spirit of early youth. In character he was even younger than in actual age. Nearly all his work was done between the years 60 and 54 B.C.; and most of it, apparently, with little effort. Born with the keenest capacities of pleasure and of pain, he never learned to regulate them: nor were they, seemingly, united with such enduring vital power as to carry him past the perilous stage of his career, so as to enable him with maturer power and more concentrated industry to employ his genius and accomplishment on works of larger scope, more capable of withstanding the shocks and chances of time, than the small volume which, by a fortunate accident, has preserved the flower and bloom of his life, and the record of all the 'sweet and bitter' which he experienced at the hands of that Power—
Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.