Tactus aratro est[61];—
and these two touches of tenderness and beauty, which appear in a poem otherwise characterised by a tone of careless drollery,—
Nec sapit pueri instar
Bimuli, tremula patris dormientis in ulna,—
and—
Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,
Adservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis[62].
But the great charm of the style in these shorter poems is its simple directness, and its popular idiomatic ring. It largely employs, especially in the poems which express his coarser feelings, common, often archaic and provincial words, forms, and idioms. There is nothing, apparently, studied about it, no ornament or involution, no otiose epithets, no subtle allusiveness. Yet in the poems expressive of his finer feelings it shows the happiest selection, not only of the most appropriate, but of the most exquisite words. To no style, in prose or verse, in any language, could the words 'simplex munditiis' be with more propriety applied. It has all the ease of refined and vigorous conversation, combined with the grace of consummate art. Though this perfection of expression could not have been attained without study and labour, yet it bears no trace of them.
In these smaller poems he shows himself as great a master of metre as of language. The more sustained power which he has over the flow of his verse, is best exemplified by the skylark ring of his great Nuptial Ode, by the hurrying agitation of the Attis, and the stately calm of the Peleus and Thetis, giving place to a more impassioned movement in the 'Ariadne' episode. But in his shorter poems, also, he shows the true gift of the ἀοιδός—the power of using musical language as a symbol of the changing impulses of feeling. Thus the delicate playfulness and tenderness of his phalaecians,—the lingering long-drawn-out sweetness, and the calm subdued sadness of the scazon, as exemplified in the 'Sirmio,' and the
Miser Catulle desinas ineptire,—