Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847

I will not inflict upon you more of Von Reichenbach, though sorely tempted, so much is there in common between his Od and the influence investigated by the Count de Tristan. If you know the researches of the former already, why verbum sat; if not, I had better not attempt further to explain to you the ignotum per ignotum.

And in truth, with reference to the divining rod, I have already given my letter extension and detail enough for the purpose I contemplated, and I will add no more. I had no intention of writing you a scientific analysis of all that I believe to be really ascertained upon this curious subject. My wish was only to satisfy you that there is something in it. I have told you where you may find the principal collection of facts elating to it, should you wish further to study them; most likely you will not. The subject is yet in its first infancy. And what interest attaches to a new-born babe, except in the eyes of its parents and its nurse? I do not in the present instance affect even the latter relation. I am contented with exercising the office of registrar of the births of this and of two or three other as yet puling truths, the feeble voices of which have hitherto attracted no attention, amidst the din and roar of the bustling world. Hoping that I have not quite exhausted your patience, I remain, Dear Archy, yours faithfully.

Mac Davus.

HORÆ CATULLIANE

LETTER TO EUSEBIUS

My Dear Eusebius, – I have lately spent a few weeks with our old friend Gratian, at his delightful retreat in Devonshire, which he has planted, fenced, and cultivated, and made as much a part of himself in its every fit and aspect as his own easy coat. You see him in every thing, in the house and out of it. Cheerful, happy, kind, and best of men! Not an animal in his stall, or his homestead, but partakes of his temper. His horses neigh to you, his cows walk up to you, his pigs run to you, rather disappointed, for you have not his stick to rub their backs with. Rise in the early morning, when the dew is sparkling on the lawn, and his spaniel greets you, runs round and round you with a bark of joyous welcome; and even his cat will, as no other cat will, show you round the gravel walks. And thrice happy are all when their expected master appears, somewhat limping in his gait, (and how few, under his continual pain, would preserve his cheerfulness as he does!) Every creature looks up into his face as better than sunshine, and he forgets none. He has a good word for all, and often more than that in his pockets. The alms beggar, the Robin, is remembered and housed. There is his little freehold of wood raised some feet from the ground opposite the breakfast room window – an entrance both ways – there is he free to come and go, and always find a meal laid for him. Happy bird, he pays neither window-tax nor servant’s tax, and yet who enjoys more daylight, or is better served?

Our good old friend still goes on improving this and improving that – has his little farm and his garden all in the highest perfection. Nor is the least care bestowed on the greenhouse, and the little aviary adjoining; for here are objects of feminine pleasure, and he loves not himself so well as he does the mistress of all, the mother and the partner. O the terrestrial paradise, in which to wait old age, and still enjoy, and breathe to the last the sunshiny breath of heaven, and feel that all is blessed and blessing; for there is peace, and that is the true name for goodness within! You shall have, my dear Eusebius, no farther description. A drop-scene, however, is not amiss to any little conversational drama. You may shift it, if you like, occasionally to the small snug library – just such a one as you would have for such a retreat. Our excellent friend took less part in our talk than we could have wished; for it began generally at night, and his infirmity sent him to bed early. But in spite of a little remnant of influenza, I and the Curate often kept it up to a late hour, which you, Eusibius, will construe into an early one. Never mind; though, perhaps, it was whispered to his discredit that the Curate kept bad hours. Those, however, who knew the fact did not keep better, and so he thought all safe. How sweet and consoling is sometimes ignorance!

Now, the Curate – let me introduce you, – “My dear Eusebius, the Curate, a class man some year or two from Oxford – a true man, in a word, worthy of this introduction to you, Eusebius.” “Mr. Curate, my friend Eusebius; see, don’t trust to his gravity of years; it is quite deceptive, and the only deceit he has about him. He is Truth in sunshine and a fresh healthy breeze. So now you know each other.” I wish, Eusebius, this were not a passage out of an imaginary conversation. Wait but for the swallow, and you shall shake hands; and you, I know, will laugh merrily within ten minutes after; and a laugh from you is as good as a ticket upon your breast, “All is natural here;” and for the rest, let come what will, that is uppermost. There will be no restraint. I cannot forbear, Eusebius, writing to you now, early in this new year, paying you this compliment, that your real conversations resemble in much “Landor’s Imaginary,” which you tell me you so greatly admire. Full, indeed, are they, these last two volumes, his works, of beautiful thoughts set off with exquisitely appropriate eloquence. You are in a garden, and if you do not always recognise the fruit as legitimate, you are quite as well pleased to find it like Aladdin’s, and would willingly store all, as he did, in the bosom of your memory. Precious stones, bigger than plums and peaches, are good for sore eyes, and something more, though they have not the flavour of apricots.

We – that is, the Trio – had been reading one evening; or rather, our friend Gratian read to me and the Curate, the “Conversation with the Abbé Delille and W. L.” We loitered, too, in the reading, as we do when the country is of a pleasant aspect, to look about us and admire – and we interspersed our own little talk by the way. Our friend could not consent that Catullus should walk with, and even, as it should seem, take the lead of his favourite Horace. “Catullus and Horace,” says Landor, “will be read as long as Homer and Virgil, and more often, and by more readers.”

“If,” said the Curate, “Catullus were not nearly banished from our public schools and our universities.”

“As he deserves,” replied Gratian; “for although there is in him great elegance, yet is there much that should not be read; and his most beautiful and most powerful little poem, his ‘Atys,’ is in its very subject unfit for schoolboys.”

Curate. – Yes, if in the presence of a master; that makes the only difficulty. The poem itself is essentially chaste, and of a grand tragic action, and grave character – is in fact a serious poem, and as such any youth may read it to himself, scarcely to another. The very subject touches on that mystical, though natural sanctity that every uncorrupted man is conscious of in the temple of his own person. To impart a thought of it is a deterioration. But a master must not hear it; and even for a very inferior reason. He cannot be a critical instructor.

Gratian. – You are right: that was a deep observation of Juvenal; it gave the caution,

“Maxima debetur pueris reverentia.”

I have often thought that good masters have ever shown very great tact in reading the Classics, where there is so much, even in the purest, that it is best not to understand.

Aquilius. (I choose to give myself that name) – Or rather to pass lightly over, for you cannot help seeing it; put your foot across it, and not lengthways; as you would over a rut in a bad bit of road, which may nevertheless lead to a most delightful place at the end. I cannot but think the “Atys” to be a borrowed poem. It is quite Greek – unlike any thing Roman. What Roman ever expressed downright mad violent action? How much there is in it that reminds you of the story of Pentheus of Euripides. Both deny a deity, and both are punished by their own hands. But the resemblance is less in the characters than in the vivid pictures and rapidity of action; and the landscape glows like one fresh from Titian’s pencil. Our friend Landor, here, I see, calls the author “graceful.” He says of Virgil that he is not so “graceful as Catullus.”

Curate. – Grace, as separate from beauty, I suppose, means something lighter. It admits a feeling not quite in earnest, not so serious but it may be sported with.

Gratian. – It is a play, however, at which only genius is expert. It is many years since I read Catullus, – I confess I thought him rather a careless fellow, and that his Lesbia was but a doll to dress out in the tawdry ribbons of his verse.

Aquilius. – Whatever his Lesbia was, his verses are chaste; and if I find a Lesbia that is not as his verse, I think it a duty of charity to conclude there were two of the name; and we know that one Lesbia was a feigned name for Clodia.

Gratian. – That is not very complimentary to the constancy of Catullus.

Curate. – I am afraid we are speaking of a virtue that was not Roman. I have been reading Catullus very recently, and was so much pleased with his gracefulness, that I thought it no bad practice to translate one or two of his small pieces: as I translated I became more and more aware of the clear elegance of his diction.

Aquilius. – I have always been an admirer of Catullus; and as I think a little employment will dissipate the remaining imaginary symptoms of influenza, when our friend and host is indulging his pigs by rubbing their backs with the end of his stick, and extending his walk to admire his mangel-worzel, or talking to his horses, his dogs, or his cat, and learning their opinions upon things in general, (for he is persuaded they have opinions, and says he knows many of them, and intends one day to catalogue them;) or while he is beyond his own gates, (and whoever catches a sight of his limp and supporting stick, is sure to hasten pace or to slacken it, loving his familiar talk,) looking out for an object of human sociality, I will steal into his library – take down his Catullus, and try my hand, good master Curate, against you. We will be, or at least believe ourselves to be,

“Et cantare pares et decantare parati.”

Gratian. – Ay, do; and as the shepherds were rewarded by their umpires of old, will I reward one or both with this stick. Shall I describe its worth and dignity after the manner of Homer, that it may be worthy of you, if you are “baculo digni;” but whatever Aquilius may say in its disparagement, it is not a bit the worse for its familiarity with my pig’s back. It is a good pig, and shall make bacon for the winner, which is the best lard he will get for his poetry. But I feel a warning hint, and must to bed – it is no longer with me the

“Cynthius aurem

Vellit et admonuit.”

The warning comes rather stronger upon bone and muscle. Heaven preserve you both from the pains of rheumatism in your old age. I suppose a troubled conscience, which they say never rests, is but the one turn more of the screw: so good night.

Our friend gone, we took down Catullus, and read with great pleasure many of his short pieces, agreeing with Landor as to the gracefulness of the poet, and resolved, if it be trifling, to trifle away some portion of our time in translating him, and with this resolve we parted for the night.

We did not, Eusebius, meet again for some days, the Curate being fully employed in his rounds of parochial visiting by day, and in preparation by night for his weekly duty. You must imagine you now see us after tea retired to the snug library. Gratian, some years the elder, resting, (if that word may be allowed to his pain, – if not to his pain, however, it shall be due to his patience) resting, I say, his whole person in his easy chair, and tapping pretty smartly with his stick the thigh from his hip to his leg, and then settling himself into the importance of a judge; but do not imagine you see us like two culprits about to be condemned for feloniously breaking into the house of one Catullus, and stealing therefrom sundry articles of plate, which we had melted down in our own crucibles, and which were no longer, therefore, to be recognised as his, but by evidence against us. All translators show a bold front; for if they come short of the meed of originality, they shift off from them the modesty of responsibility, and unblushingly ascribe all faults to their author. We were therefore easy enough, and ready to make as free with our Rhadamanthus as with our Catullus. Not to be too long – thus commenced our talk.

Aquilius. – The first piece Catullus offers is his dedication – it is to an author to whom I owe a grudge, and perhaps we all of us do. He has caused us some tears, and more visible marks, and I confess something like an aversion to his concise style. It is to Cornelius Nepos. How much more like a modern dedication, than one of Dryden’s day, both as to length and matter.

ad cornelium nepotemThis little-book – and somewhat light —’Tis polished well, and smoothly bright,To whom shall I now dedicate?To you, Cornelius, wont to rateMy trifling wares at highest worth.E’en then, when boldly you stepped forth,First of Italians to compose,In three short books of nervous prose,All age’s annals – work of niceResearch, and studiously concise.Such as it is receive – and lookWith usual favour on my book;And grant, O queen of wits and sages,Motherless Virgin, these my pagesMay pass from this to future ages.

Curate. – Queen of wits and sages, – “O Patrima Virgo” – is that translating?

Gratian. – That’s right – have at him!

Aquilius. – To be sure it is. What English reader would know else that Minerva was meant by “Motherless Virgin?” he would have to go back to the story of Jupiter beating her out of his own brains. So as he is not familiar with the creed, as one of it, I let him into the secret of it at once; and thus out comes the book from the “Minerva Press,” “λαβὲ τὸ βυβλὶον.”

Gratian. – (Reads, “O Patrima Virgo,” &c.) Well, well – let it pass. The dedication won’t pay along reckoning. We must not look too nicely into the mouth of the book – let it speak for itself. Now, Mr. Curate, what have you?

Curate. – I didn’t trouble myself with such a dedication, but passed on to “Ad Passerem Lesbiæ.”

Gratian. – More attractive metal.

Curate. – Not at all attractive; for there is considerable difficulty, and as I suppose a corrupted text, before we reach six lines. Here I let the bird loose.

Sparrow, minion of my dear,Little animated toy,Whom the fair delights to bearIn her bosom lapt in joy.Whom she teases and displeases,With her white forefinger’s end,Thus inviting savage bitingFrom her tiny feather’d friend.Image burning of my yearning,When at fondness she would play;Thus she takes her aught that makes herPensive moments glide away.’Tis a balm for her soft sorrow,Tranquillising beauty’s breast;Would I might her plaything borrow,So to lull my cares to rest.I would prize it, as the maidenPrized the golden apple thrown,Which displacing her in racing,Loosed at last her virgin zone.

Aquilius. – Here lies the difficulty:

“Quum desiderio meo nitentiCarum nescio quid lubet jocari,(Ut solatiolum sui dolorisCredunt, quum gravis acquiescet ardor.”)

Another edition has it:

“Credo ut gravis acquiescat ardor.”

Gratian. – Leave it to Œdipus – make sense of it, and we must not be too nice.

Aquilius. – Well, then, it possibly means, that she passes off the pain of the bite with a little coquetry and action, as we move about a limb pretty briskly when it tingles.

Gratian. – O, the cunning – argumentum ad hominem.

Aquilius. – Thus I venture —

ad passerem lesbiæLittle sparrow, gentle sparrow,Whom my Lesbia loveth so;Her sweet playmate, whom she petteth,And she lettethTo her bosom come and go.Loving there to hold thee ever,Her forefinger to thy bill,Oft she pulleth and provoketh;And she mocketh,Till you bite her harder still.Then new beauty glistening o’er her,Pain’d and blushing doth she feign,Some sweet play of love’s excesses,And caressesMore to soothe or hide her pain.Would thou wert my pretty birdie,Plaything – playmate unto me,Knowing when her loss doth grieve me,To relieve me,For she seeks relief from thee.Birdie, thou shouldst be such treasureAs the golden apple thrown,Was to Atalanta, spyingWhich in flying,Cost the loosening of her zone.

Curate. – That may be a possible translation of the difficulty, if the text be somewhat amended; but who ever heard of a hurt from the peck of a sparrow?

Gratian. – I’ll take you into our aviary to-morrow, and you shall try on your own rough-work finger the peck of a bullfinch; and I think you may grant that Lesbia’s finger was a little softer. Who would trust the tenderness of a Curate’s forefinger, case-hardened as it is with his weekly steel-pen work, and deadened by the nature of it, against all Lesbias and their sparrows. Lesbia’s forefinger was the very pattern of a forefinger, soft to touch as to feel – that did no work. I dare to say Shakspeare was thinking of such a one, when he said,

“The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.”

There’s something playfully pretty, and lightly tender in this little piece; but I don’t see by what link of thought poor Atalanta is brought in, and thus stripped to the skin, as she was out-stripped in the race. Admitting the text emendable, may not there be supposed such a connexion as this, – that he wishes the bird would be his plaything, that he might lay it as an offering at her feet, – that she might take it, as did Atalanta the golden apple, and become herself the winner’s reward? Why should not I come in with an ad libitum movement? We, limping rheumaticists, have ever a spiteful desire to trip up the swift-footed. Now, then, for an old man’s limp against Atalanta’s speed.

Birdie, be my plaything, go —At her flying feet be thrown; —Like the golden apple, woo her,Atalanta’s wise pursuerCast and won her for his own; —Pretty birdie aid me so.

Galatea won her lover by the apple. “Malo me Galatea petit.”

Curate. – A well thrown apple that golden pippin, grown doubtless from a pip dropt on Mount Ida, and hence the name. We shall not run against you, I perceive.

Gratian. – Don’t talk of golden pippins, or I shall mount my hobby, and go through the genealogy of my whole orchard, and good-bye to Catullus.

Curate. – If you give way to your imagination, you may invent a thousand meanings to the passage; but taking it as I find it, I would attach only this meaning to it, – that Catullus would say, “Lesbia’s favourite sparrow” would be as attractive to me as was the golden apple which was thrown in her way when she was racing, to Atalanta. She was to be married to the first youth who could outrun her, so that literally she was very much run after.

Gratian. – Run after, indeed! Her pursuer, Hippomanes, hadn’t my rheumatism (tapping his knee and leg with his stick) or she would have had the apple, and not him. You young men of modern days do not throw your golden apples, but look to pick up what you can. These old tales, or old fables, cast a shade of shame upon our unromantic days. There was a king’s daughter offered like a “handy-cap,” as if the worthy of mankind were a racing stud.

Aquilius. – But the lady was not so easily won after all; for there were three golden apples to be picked up: and a bold man was he that threw them, for if he lost, there was neither love nor mercy for him. The condition was worse than Sinbad’s. It is a strange story this of Atalanta and her lover, turned into lions by Cybele. The passage in Catullus being corrupt, there is probably an omission, for, as it is, the transition is very abrupt.

Gratian. – I see the golden apples running about in all directions, and am half asleep, and should be quite so but for this rheumatic hint that it is time to retire: so good-night.

Now you will conclude, Eusebius, that I and the Curate made a night and morning of it. On the present occasion, at least, it was not the case; we very soon parted.

The following morning, which for the season was freshly sunny, found us on a seat under a verandah near the breakfast room, and close to the aviary, from which we had a moment before come; and the Curate was then wringing his finger after the bites and pecks the bullfinch had given him, which Gratian told him, jocularly, was having a comment on the text at his finger’s end, and immediately asked for Catullus. The book was opened – and the Curate put his finger upon the “Death of Lesbia’s Sparrow,” – which he read as he had thus rendered it: —

de passere mortuo lesbiæYe Graces, and ye Cupids, mourn,And all that’s graceful, woman born,My sweet one’s sparrow dead!Smitten by death’s fatal arrowLies my darling’s darling sparrow!As the eyes in her sweet headShe did love him, and he knew herAs my fair one knows her mother;He was sweet as honey to her,In her lap for ever sitting,Hither thither round her flitting,To his mistress and no otherHe address’d his twittering tale.Now adown death’s darksome valeHe is gone to seek a bournWhence they tell us none return.Plague upon you, dark and narrowShades of Orcus, without pitySwallowing every thing that’s pretty —As ye took the pretty sparrow.Wo’s the day that you lie dead!Little wretch, ’tis all your doingThat my fair one’s eyes are red,Swoln and red with tearful rueing.

Aquilius. – It would be childish to blame the poor bird for the crime of dying, as if he had died out of spite; when, if the truth could be told, perhaps the cat killed him. (At this moment, Gratian’s favourite cat rubbed herself against his legs, first her face and head, and then her back, and looked up to him, as if begging him to plead for her race; and he did so, and spoke kindly to her, and said, pussey would not kill any bird though he should trust her in the aviary; and she, as if she knew what he said, walked off to it, and rubbed her face against the wires, and returned to us again.) Well, I continued, I don’t see why the bird should be called wretch fer that; and factum male means to express misfortune, not fault. So let the malefactum be the Curate’s, and treat him accordingly.

Gratian. – Come, let us see your bird. Perhaps it may be necessary to kill two with one stone. But I forget —the bird is dead already.

Aquilius. —

de passere mortuo lesbiæYe Cupids, every Queen of Love,Whate’er hath heart or beauty, shedYour floods of tears, now hang the head —My darling’s sparrow, pet, and dove,Is dead: that bird she prized aboveHer own sweet eyes, is dead, is dead.That little bird, that honey bird,As fair child knows her mother, knewHis own own mistress; and he, too,From her sweet bosom never stirred,As prompt at every look and word,He to that nest of softness flew.But archly pert and debonnair,Still further in he fondly nestled,For her alone piped, chirped, and whistled.But he has reached that dismal where,Whose dreary path none ever dareRetrace, with whom death once hath wrestled.O Orcus’ unrequiting shade,Devouring all the good, the dear,Couldst thou not spare one birdling here?Alas, poor thing! for thou hast madeHer eyes, how loved, with grief o’erweighed,Grow red, and gush with many a tear.

Curate. – Is that translating? Look at the first line of the original —

Lugete, o Veneres, Cupidinesque.

You have acted the undertaker to the sorrow, dressed it out, and protracted it, and set it afloat upon a river of wo, with Queens of Love as chief-mourners, hanging out their weepers.

Aquilius. – Yes, for the Zephyrs to blow. They are light, airy, graceful. They did not come from the first room of the mourning institution, where the soft-slippered man in black gently, and bowing low as he shows his grief-items, whispers, “Much in vogue for deep affliction.” The Queens of Love pass on to “the mitigated wo department,” and I hope you will confess they have put on their sorrow with grace and taste.

Gratian. – That’s good – “the mitigated wo department.” But there’s a department in these establishments farther on still. There is a little glass door, generally left half open, where there is a most delicate show of “orange blossoms.” But my good worthy Curate, I don’t blame our friend for this little enlargement, because, if it is not in the words of the original, it is every bit of it in the tune and melody of the verses. See how it swells out in full flow in “venustiorum,” – stays but a moment, and is off again without stop to “puellæ,” – and that again is repeated ere grief can be said to take any rest. I shall acquit the translator as I would the landscape painter, who, seeing how flowing a line of easy and graceful beauty pervades all nature, and is indeed her great characteristic, rather aims to realise that, than laboriously to dot in every leaf and flower. Characteristic expression is every thing. I am not quite satisfied that either of you have hit the