The Trojan land on the Rhoetean shore Hath hidden him for ever from these eyes,-- And I with glad surprise, And brother's love, shall welcome thee no more. Loved more than life, dear brother! what can I But love thee still, and mourn for thee full long In a funereal song, In secret to assuage my grief thereby? As amid many boughs all leaf-array'd The Danlian bird, the nightingale, out-poured, When Itys she deplored, Her mellow sorrows in the thickest shade:) Yet, Ortalus, 'mid tears that flow so fast, The work of your Battiades I send, Lest you should deem, dear friend, Your wishes to the winds are idly cast, And from my mind escaped, all unaware, As falls the fruit, love's furtive gift, unbid, In virgin bosom hid, When she, forgetful of its lying there, Would suddenly arise, and run to greet The coming of her mother, from her vest And her now loosen'd breast, The shameless apple rolls before her feet. And she, poor maid! abashed, and in the hush Of shame, before her mother cannot speak, While all her virgin cheek Betrays her secret in the conscious blush. CURATE.--It is very tender--the last image is delicately beautiful. I did not translate it. GRATIAN.--Pretty as the passage of the maiden's disaster in dropping the lover's gift--and that, too, be it observed, in the hurry of her tenderness, which increases the beauty, or rather accomplishes it--yet is it not abrupt in a piece where there is the expression of so much grief? Catullus was an affectionate man, more especially affectionate brother; on other occasions, if I remember rightly, he deplores this brother's loss. Now, Master Curate, what do you offer us? CURATE.--Not now a verse translation, but an observation on a little piece of raillery, in which Catullus quizzes one Arrius for his aspirating; and, I mean it not as a pun, exasperating, though it should seem that his friends were not a little exasperated at his bad pronunciation. Do we inherit from the Romans this, our (Cockneyism, I was going to say, but it is too general to allow of such a limit,) vulgarity of speech? "Where," says Catullus, "Arrius meant to say commoda, he uttered it as c_h_ommoda, and _h_insidias for insidias, and never thought he spoke remarkably well unless he laid great stress upon the aspirate, calling it with emphasis _h_insidias. I believe his mother, his uncle, his maternal grandfather and grandmother all spoke in the same way. When the man went into Syria, all ears had a little rest, and heard those words pronounced without this emphatic aspirate, and began to entertain no fears respecting the use of the words; when on a sudden they hear--that after Arrius had gone thither, the Ionian seas were no longer Ionian, but Hionian." This is curious. As the Romans had possession here more than four hundred years, did they leave us this legacy?