A thousand kisses then bestow; Ten thousand more,--ten thousand blisses,-- And when we've counted million kisses-- Begin again,--for, Lesbia, know, We way have made mistakes and misses. Then let our lips the full amount Commingle so, in one delusion, Blending beginning with conclusion, Nor we, nor envy's self can count How many in the sweet confusion. CURATE.--I protest against this as a translation. There is addition. Catullus says nothing of "mistakes and misses." AQUILIUS.--I maintain it is implied in "conturbabimus illa:" it shows they had given up all idea of counting correctly. GRATIAN.--I think it may pass; but you have a word twice,--"day closed," and "_close_ our eyes." Why not have it thus:-- "But our brief day once o'er," or once pass'd,--yet it is not so good, as "closed." I see in the note on "conturbabimus," great stress is laid on the mischievous spell that envy was supposed to convey, like the "evil eye." This does not make much for Catullus--for a good kiss in real earnest, not your kiss poetical, might bid defiance to every _charm_ but its own. CURATE.--There is something of the same superstition in the piece but one following, "mala fascinare lingua" alludes evidently to the euphemia of the Greeks,--the superstition of the evil eye and evil tongue. The very word _invidere_ seems to have been adopted in its wider sense, from the particular superstition of the evil eye. The Neapolitans of the present day inherit, in full possession, both superstitions. GRATIAN.--Nor are either quite out of England; and I can hardly think that a legacy left us by the Romans. There is something akin to the feeling in the dislike old country gossips show to having their likenesses taken. I have known a sketcher pelted for putting in a passing figure. And I have seen a servant girl, in the house of a friend, who, having never, until she came into his service, seen a portrait, could not be prevailed upon, for a long while, to go alone into a room where there were some family portraits. What comes next after all these kisses? AQUILIUS.--More kisses. GRATIAN.--Then you force a bad pun from me, and put my aching bones into an _omni-bus_, and it is as much as I can do to bear the shaking. Give your account of them, Aquilius. AQUILIUS.--AD LESBIAM. How many kisses will suffice, You ask me, Lesbia,--ask a lover! Go bid him count the sands;--discover, Even to a very grain precise, How many lie in heaps, or hover, When gusty winds the sand hills stir About the benzoin-bearing plain, Between Jove's Cyrenean fane, And Battus' sacred sepulchre. How many stars, in stillest night, On loving thefts look down approving,-- So many kisses should requite Catullus, ah too madly loving.-- Ye curious eyes, be closed in slumber, That would be spies upon our wooing, That there be none to note the number, Nor tongue to babble of our doing.